Choosing boys over girls

Jeff Jacoby's analysis in today's Boston Globe is right on the mark, and has (as Secretary of State Kissinger once said) the added benefit of being true--based on some factual study. It is now a given that women around the world are using abortion--sometimes in response to government mandates to limit family size--to gender-select their children. However, they choose boys instead of girls with statistically significant regularity. I don't know the demographic mechanics of this, but it sounds like a disaster in the making. Jacoby worries that American women may be doing the same. I'm sure it proves nothing one way or the other, but I have known more than one family over the years whose sole reason for having that second, third or later child was that the earlier children were all girls.

I'll simply say that humankind's deeper moral intuitions, around which later codes of law are constructed, may embody serious truths. And truths will defeat ideology every time, in the long run. Facts are what remain, no matter how inconvenient they may seem to one's own prejudices or to the prevailing winds of opinion.

Another perhaps random thought: when I was young, the older ladies would say, upon hearing that so-and-so had had a male child, that it seemed there had been a lot of boys born lately. At that point, someone would take the cue and chime in: "Well, it looks like there's going to be a war." Is a tale told by old wives necessarily an old wives' tale?

Asian Cultures Reading Project and List

OK, here's the reading list. Plenty of selection, all readable. Follow your interests. I physically saw a good number of these at Barnes & Noble, but you can get them online and probably at other places, too. The links are to Amazon, where you can find reviews, but use your own judgment about where to buy these.

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson (Paperback - Dec 18, 2007)

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (Hardcover - May 22, 2007)

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Paperback - Jan 30, 2007)

Staircase of a Thousand Steps by Masha Hamilton (Paperback - May 7, 2002)

Snakes and Ladders by Gita Mehta (Paperback - April 13, 1998)

Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman (Paperback - Oct 12, 1987)

Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now by Jan Wong (Paperback - May 19, 1997)

The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family by Duong Van Mai Elliott (Paperback - April 20, 2000)

Daughters of the River Huong by Uyen Nicole Duong (Paperback - Aug 1, 2005)

The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan by Eiko Ikegami (Paperback - Mar 25, 1997)

Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World (California Studies in Food and Culture, 11) by Theodore C. Bestor (Paperback - Jul 12, 2004)

The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the Life of a Japanese Woman and Her Family by Elisabeth Bumiller (Paperback - Oct 29, 1996)

City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi by William Dalrymple (Paperback - Mar 25, 2003)

As I mentioned in class, I'll have the requirements for the written paper available for you when we meet on the 24th.

P.S.--
Meanwhile, I ran across this article in Friday's Houston Chronicle about new demonstrations and a harsh Chinese crackdown in Tibet. There are some interesting comments following the article, too. There have been some updates as of Saturday, 3/15--at least 10 dead, according to the Chinese (which probably translates to 1000 in reality).

Gingrich on Obama's message

Apparently Newt commented this week on Obama's speech. What he says is significant and should be taken seriously by the Republicans, regardless of who is put forward as the Democrat nominee.

Thinking outside the box...

... that the Democrats have put themselves in. Both candidates are working very hard to make themselves unacceptable to the general electorate and--if that's possible--to their party. I wonder which enterprising and nervy party elder will be willing to propose a short-circuit to the system, and call for a third candidate to step in to carry the party banner to the convention and into the fall campaign. I believe that there may be good arguments to be made along these lines, and that it can be done with enough transparency so that it does not have the complete "smoke-filled room" appearance. Surely there are folks already whispering this possibility about...?



UPDATE [3/28]: How odd--
Since I posted that remark on the 18th, all of a sudden there's mention in the blogs and on a couple of the radio shows of the possibility of a compromise involving the former Vice-President. That would be Al Gore. He certainly would be as formidable a candidate as the two epigones now in contention.

Truth is important

The one thing we find bothersome about Pastor Wright's positions on "the government's" historic treatment of African-Americans is not their anger. There is a right to anger, to indignation, and to a sense of radical urgency. These feelings are a legitimate patrimony of those whose history is defined by such a dreadful historical injustice as chattel slavery, forced dislocation and de facto genocide. I think this point has not been appreciated in the media commentary. Many seem to find the anger offensive, in itself. I don't have a problem with the anger. I do question the easy acceptance of the main points of the "radical mythology" whose platform we've heard before: the HIV/AIDS conspiracy; the 9-11 plot that only represents (in self-contradiction) the "chickens come home to roost," and so on. I think Mr. Obama gave some recognition to this problem in his speech. There is a duty to truth: this is one thing that is present above all in the public testimonies of Dr. King. Read a document like the Letter from Birmingham's Jail, or the "Dream" speech. The truthfulness and clarity of thought are what render these great documents. Like Dr. King, Mr. Obama is right that African-American anger and "white fear" must be dealt with in serious dialogue. I think this must be granted.

The heart of the Speech

The speech is here.

It's worth reading.

As usual, when Mr. Obama has time to prepare, his rhetoric is political rhetoric at a level that is higher than that to which we are accustomed. When he thinks, he really thinks, and he has a point of view that is significantly his own and not boilerplate partisan verbiage. He:

• addresses the problem of his relationship with Rev. Wright,
• accepts it as a problem,
• addresses why in his view it is a problem, artfully blaming the critics and the press,
• frankly discusses important negatives in the minister's ideology (which he appears to consider to be true negatives),
• displays loyalty to his own past, which includes a personal relationship with the minister that he is not willing to sacrifice (--this is not a bad trait, in general--),
• makes an effort to use that unique past to show how he understands the common American experience of racial discomfort,
• and makes his case about how this "universal" experience can move the country forward on these issues and their economic consequences.

While it's apparent that many commentators will still carp at this relationship with the radical minister, he's made an attempt to go over their heads to speak to Americans heart-to-heart, and with a degree of intelligent common sense. If he ends up as the nominee for the Democrats, then the race in the fall will truly be formidable, because of the way he can perform when the chips are down.

None of the above is meant to be construed as an endorsement. One would still have to buy the collectivist program of his party--to paraphrase the movie: "he's a Democrat like any other, only more so." One would also have to overlook several very clever rhetorical moments that again show how so many contemporary progressives build their case on a deep moral-equivalence argument. This the Republicans will have to address and expose in the fall.

"An entire orchard..."

Professor Hanson says that Mr. Obama's rebuttal of the newer news coverage of Rev. Wright's views about America, its corporate morality, its culture and its domestic and foreign policies as picking and choosing isolated, unrepresentative comments out of their homiletical context, is disingenous at best. Far from "cherry-picking," Hanson suggests that the media stumbled into "an entire orchard." Sadly, he's probably right. And the minister is probably not alone in his extremism. We know that the press have covered extreme fundamentalists of the general conservative bent who have bizarre views, too. The problem is that Mr. Obama tolerated a long exposure to these views and now is attempting a very inconsistent, self-contradictory denial of his awareness of these views. He did NOT look very good in the interview played on Fox News this morning. Today's New York Times has a long news piece covering the issue, too. I'd say Mr. Obama has to realize that his candidacy is now severely compromised. I'm a little sad, too, because he represented a new voice for the Democrats--something other than the same tired way of defending their party's positions, such as those are.

Apparently, a satisfied customer....

The reporting rules that banks have to live by betrayed him, mainly because he was a repeat customer. He must live with his conscience, his family, and his duty to do what is right by the people of New York. These all demand he resign. It's NOT a "private matter," as he said at his press conference--I'm not sure it would be even if no laws were broken. That sanctimonious attitude that he's always projected is now completely transparent. What we see through the veil ain't pretty.

Deepak Chopra

Dr. Chopra suggests three Christs: historical, theological, cosmological. There isn't a lot of detail in the article, but certainly the idea is not new. From Origen and other early scholars to Teilhard de Chardin, the sense of a cosmic, spiritual, reality of Christ as the Savior/Reconciler of all things has been present. It's not only Pauline, but fully a part of mainstream Christianity. Now the question is whether the presence of the cosmic Christ is recovered within the Christian and Catholic core beliefs or becomes the center of another modern attempt to claim a valid gnosticism.

The Monster vs. The Starr

Fox News is reporting that Mr. Bill is waltzing through Mississippi, saying that a Hillary-Barack ticket (in that order, we imagine) would be "unstoppable." That's wonderful! I'm sure the The Starr's camp is thrilled. At this point, the best assessment of anything Bubba says is that the anxiety and desperation are transparent. If the Monster camp were feeling any sort of assurance about an eventual victory, they'd be acting like the cat that ate the canary, and playing a very coy game. Now, they're closer to mine canaries, sensing real danger. This match is getting more desperate, and the stresses are showing on both sides.

Endgame: for the remaining primaries, it's all about who will blink first. Mistakes, ever more likely with the stresses, could be fatal. The Starr must play smart, hold serve firmly in Wyoming and Mississippi, and organize like a maniac in Pennsylvania. Like it did in Ohio, the race depends on the turnout of his more youthful minions, who somewhat failed him in Ohio, compared to The Monster's blue haired matrons of doom.

[By the way: speaking of coquettish fancies, can anyone explain what, if any, power John Edwards still holds over his delegates? Does their release or relegation have to wait for the convention, or can he assign them at any time? How are they bound?]