Asymmetrical Information

I agree. The notion that theocrats have any power in the United States is as ludicrous as the notion that their agenda (which DOES NOT EXIST, PEOPLE!) would be harmful.

Why does the left come up with this stuff?

I sure can't think of a good reason.

Furthermore, even if these "boogeymen" the left calls "theorcrats" were extant, or even exerted power over our government, the threat they'd pose to the American way of life wouldn't compare to the threat of a less than apt example from British history being employed on a philosophy blog. Let's keep some perspective here!

There is a short story, which I cannot find now, where a man takes the wrong coach, and discovers that he's among the worst of the worst, heading in a dreadful direction.
One of the miscreants is a baby farmer, who speaks dismssively of the infants who "squinny their lives away."
The concept of baby farming is, apparently, that the infants are to be allowed to die of starvation or thirst--no current allusions meant.
This is new, then, since the previous millenias' practice had been strangulation at birth.
Why the practice of baby farming is hauled out as if it's something specially arranged for the hysterical is unclear.

Heavens, that puts a rather sinister spin on 'Poor Little Buttercup". I had assumed from the context in Pinafore that it was something like wet-nursing or daycare..

One word: Abortion. Our society has it now. And it's certainly not because of the "theocrats."

I've got to admit that I don't follow the logic of this pro-abortion argument all the way to the end. A hypothetical neo-Victorian reading our newspapers a hundred years from now would see plain-text ads for family planning and be just as shocked, yes? So would they be justified in concluding that such a thing was the natural and inevitable conclusion of abandoning the Burkeian natural order?

The Victorian age plays the heavy in a lot of facile historical arguments, mainly because they preceded us by a hundred odd years instead of the other way around.

The whole baby farmerer concept as presented seemed odd to me so I checked out the article that Chris Bertram based his post on. The article is a "scholarly" work that was published in a student journal in the 1989-1990 school year. It is poorly written and has an abundance of internal contradictions. Things such as the reference to a monthly (then later called weekly) fee at one point and then a reference being made to anonymous one time payments. The fee structure made no sense either since 20 shillings made a pound the 15 shillings fee would be much lower than the 12 pounds fee for an infant under 2 months. Yet the infant under 2 months should be much easier to dispatch (not that I have experience in this area).

I did further research on the 'net and that research shows that baby farms tended to be horrible places and many of the children placed there would eventually die because of malnutrition or bad sanitation. The infants who were purchased were usually sold to someone wanting to adopt a child so they would likely have been reasonably well cared for if the farmers thought they had a reasonable expectation of placing the child. The going rate at that time was up to 100 pounds for the purchase of a baby by someone wishing to adopt the child.

The truth of baby farming is horrible but the story as presented by Dorothy L. Haller does not appear to be an accurate account of what actually took place. It is kind of funny though that Chris Bertram is quoting from an undergraduate paper written about 15 years ago as his authority on a topic. To Chris' credit, a link to the original source was included.

Note that Bertram is a member of the Rosseau Society, which celebrates a man who sent his own children off to orphanages as soon as they were weaned.

If not a handy-dandy Papist conspiracy, the Progressives are at least raving about millions of "deadbeat" dads who have somehow hatched a silent but effective conspiracy to leave half the world's women pregnant and penniless...and themselves destitute and on the run as likely as not.

Just as irrationally, NOW's infiltration of government to throw dad to the curb protects equal millions of federally subsidized welfare and/or single moms who have every authority and motivation to run single parent households. Good enough to father, not good enough to be a dad.

Funny how it's all about your point of view. At the least it seems the pendulum has swung from, as Zach says, the stereotypical Victorian heavy...

Thanks, Megan.

There is absolutely no way that the religious right would agree to a theocracy. Who would lead it? If they could agree well enough to collaborate on something like that, there wouldn't be so many Christian denominations. I think most of them are well aware of why the Pilgrims left England.

They also know that you can't force people to believe what they don't want to.

You can tell someone is out of ideas when they have to resort to trying to scare people.

I agree. The notion that theocrats have any power in the United States is as ludicrous as the notion that their agenda (which DOES NOT EXIST, PEOPLE!) would be harmful.

Why does the left come up with this stuff?

SamAm
Because they have the quasi-religious conviction that they alone bear the truth, therefore they think it legitimate to demonise the right, even if falsely. Once the right is demonised they garner votes with no further effort. That's why the Liberals here in Canada have been so successful, they've actually got people terrified of the Conservatives, to the point where many would rather have the corrupt, money stealing Liberals in power than risk electing a bunch of right wing theocrats.

Jane,

What do you think the US would be like if the Dobson/Delay worldview became law?

"Why does the left come up with this stuff?"

Because it works. It's its own bible-thumping, collection-plate-stuffing mechanism. Keeps em coming.

". . .that puts a rather sinister spin on 'Poor Little Buttercup". I had assumed from the context in Pinafore that it was something like wet-nursing or daycare..

Indeed it WAS something like that. And at least two of Buttercup's charges grew up quite nicely, thank you: Captain Corcoran of the Pinafore, and
Ralph Rackstraw the hero who wins the Captain's daughter.

Of course, Buttercup did commit the minor gaffe of accidentally mixing up the two when they were still infants, but by the end of the musical each has resumed his proper place in the Queen's Navee.

I think we can safely exonerate Buttercup, even though she's listed in the dramatis personae as "a bum-boat woman."

Damn. If the "culture of life" folks make no more sense than those babbling here, us "culture of death" types have nothing to fear. "Wouldn't recognize a logically consistent argument if it stepped on their head" comes to mind.

It's worth noting that some of the usual complaints about the Victorian era (children working in "dark Satanic mills") were due to a drop in the infanticide rate.

Ever notice that none of the people they want to blame for bring back "popish" ways are Catholics? Or should we remind them that Catholics had little or no social standing in the Victorian world that the "theocrats" want to bring back?

God forbid we should let mere semantics interfere with their worldview...

ereynol, the only use of the word popish in this entire thing came from Jane, not from the article she read on the other blog.

Those who claim that the U.S. is already a theocracy are wrong. Those who claim that there is no element of the Religious Right who want us to be one are equally wrong. From answers.com:

the·oc·ra·cy (thē-ŏk'rə-sē) pronunciation
n., pl. -cies.
1. A government ruled by or subject to religious authority.
2. A state so governed.

Are you people actually serious in claiming that Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, the younger Graham, the Family Research Council and those who follow them don't want our government to become one that fits that definition? Please.

"Baby farming" ranged from legitimate operations on down to what amounted to an infanticide racket. Back in those days, single motherhood (whether via illegitimate birth or widowhood) was a terrible burden---employment for women was scarce and paid little, and many positions (such as servant) precluded taking care of a child.

The Victorians did have better methods of birth control, but they had an asinine taboo on it that prevented many "good" girls and women from using it. Abortion was also available, but dangerous, since it often involved ingesting various noxious potions "to restore blocked menstrual periods," wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

And I'd say that the chances of a theocracy here in the US are vanishingly slim. To get one, you'd need a combination of very bad times (think Great Depression Mark II) and a tightly-knit, nationwide church whose members were willing to vote as they were told. If the Mormons were less localized, they might provide the second condition. Of course, if it even began to look slightly like the next President was going to also be the Mormon Prophet, Seer and Revelator, every other church in the country would unite to stop it. (And i am not dissing the Mormons, merely using them as an example most people are familiar with)

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I agree. The notion that theocrats have any power in the United States is as ludicrous as the notion that their agenda (which DOES NOT EXIST, PEOPLE!) would be harmful.

Why does the left come up with this stuff?

I sure can't think of a good reason.
>>>

The Left comes up with this stuff because the best way to disguise what one hand is doing is to point at the other. The conspiracy against the First and Second Amendments and the Left's decades long media tyranny are just the beginnings of the story. The school system, endless push to governmentalise everything and anything, the college monopoly, and a host of double standards are all papered over by the cries of "the church goers!"

Eric: Gyah! You've discovered our secret plan! Seriously, that's the game plan: wait for society to almost collapse (the key moment is when "the Constitution hangs by a thread") and then step in and set things right :P

Actually, even Dobson/Delay in their greatest fantasies do not, I am sure, imagine a theocratic future. And, in addition, people like me who are very pro-Bush and hawkish, aren't willing to go very far with these two.

Seeing baby-farming as the result of a theocentric system borders on the insane. As someone noted above, Rousseau tended to lyrically discuss his own approach to child-raising. Do we see him as a theocrat?

From another blog:

Infanticide is routine (whether legal or not) in any given society until reliable abortion and effective contraception become widely available. As an October 1998 editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine noted, infanticide and child abandonment have always been common, and “As recently as the early 1800s in Europe, up to a third of live-born infants were killed or abandoned by their parents.” In urban areas, matters were even worse: just two centuries ago, over half the babies born in Paris were sent to wet nurses or rural “baby farms” where 20 to 40 percent perished in the first month of life alone, with about half dying before their first birthday. City-living families had no choice, because women had to work (”outside the home”) and there was no effective way to limit births and no one to take care of the resulting oversupply of babies.

During the 19th century one out of five newborns were still abandoned at state-run institutions in Paris, where they were then transferred to wet nurses and baby farms with, again, about half dying in the first year of life. (This is according to archival and documentary research by Rachel Ginnis Fuchs, Assistant Professor of History at ASU, which she published in ‘Abandoned Children: Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France’, SUNY Press 1984.)(/blockquote>
Was 19th century France a theocracy and I somehow missed it?

GT: Nothing.

Jim S: I'm not sure who you people refer to, but I'll step forward and claim that "Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, the younger Graham, the Family Research Council" most definitely do not want to do away with representative government.

Dang good post. One thing none of the people yelling about a theocrat agenda seem to get is there are easily hundreds of Christian denominations. Dobson and Delay don't believe all the same thing. Hell, 2/3 of Dobson's supporters disagree with him on something. And only a few Christian groups still have a line of authority (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican) Only one of those has total control from the top.

Also abortion was legal early on in this country until quickening. It was doctors who decide to stop it when they realized the baby was alive before then. Christian opposition to any abortion on the other hand goes back to the first century AD...

GT, do I think that if Tom DeLay got his wildest dreams, the result would be a system in which women were forced to send their infants off to baby farms? No. I understand that the left enjoys believing those sorts of things, but they're silly, not least because, as I pointed out, the UnitedStates never had a tradition of baby farms, even when there was no birth control. Baby farms were an economic and technological issue, as well as a sociological one, and the economic and technological reasons for them have disappeared.

AFAIK, the Victorians had two methods of birth control--lambskin (and later rubber) condoms, and a device resembling a primitive copper diaphragm. Both were expensive, and until rubber came along, required fitting; hence, they were not widely employed. There's simply no comparison between this and current technologies, which most churches are perfectly happy with, though they only want married people to use them. Moreover, technologies like the pill are dual-use; if you can't get them for birth control because you're unmarried, it's not hard to get them for your crippling menstrual cramps.

It should be noted that a 50% death rate under conditions of the rural 19th century was very high, but not out of all proportions.

I used the rythm for several years, more than a decade, and NEVER had any problem with it. Workend perfectly for my wife and I. Way over the Victorian possibilities, as you say. The Billings method is superb.

For heaven's sake. Is there really a serious contention out there that because some member or members of a fundamentalist sect might want to see its scion elected President, that person COULD be elected President, along with sufficient of his fellows to impose a "Handmaid's Tale" theocracy? Good gravy, people. Get a grip on yourselves.

Get a grip indeed. Maybe the moonbat left invents these stereotypical myths to keep itself entertained. Meanwhile it naturally has no realistic perspective on the virtual criminalization of anything but secular humanism in government, statist schooling, and more anti-religious lobbies, organizations, and congresspeople than you can count.

Further, hysteric panting about Bush being a zealot just prove they don't have a clue who Bush -- as the result of his bloodline and family connections -- really is.

Should the end come for America it'll invariably be by way of saturated secular statism. The unavoidable, inescapable, and permanent tyranny of money and power that can and will have absolutely no use for faiths, religions, or any contest from the people.

The US has no more chance of being ruled by southern Baptist phantoms than Europe.

I am fairly certain that the worldlier Victorians were also aware of the sponge, which offered a goodly shift in the odds without custom fitting. The wee wifey and I were discussing this earlier today, in the context of prostitution in Deadwood.

Nowadays the purely calendar-based rythm method has been supplanted by fertility awareness, which greatly increases its effectiveness. I would thing that in the hypothetical event of a theocracy, ovulation detection would still be available, "as an aid to conception only".

It seems to me like the original post really begs the question, assuming that the referenced "theocrats" are the pro-lifers who want to ban abortion. If the embryo is a person from the moment of conception, then abortion is a WORSE alternative than baby-farming (some infants survived baby-farms).

Oh, and a favor--could we stipulate that the US in 1950 was not a theocracy? DeLay and Dobson would like a regulatory/legal environment that's close to what existed when my parents were children--hardly a theocracy.

I'd like to thank you all (including Jane) for proving yourselves incapable of reading any words that disagree with you without twisting them so as to make it easier for you to easily dismiss them. Read the definition again. Does it say that it must be one church running a non-representative government? No, it does not. Representative government is just as capable of tyranny as a non-representative one. Why do you think the Constitution was written as it was and judicial review of the constitutionality of legislative action was implemented? You know, those things that the far right wants to eliminate? Have you actually not been paying any attention to the current actions of DeLay, et al? Have you ignored the big tent meeting being sponsored by the Family Research Council, with guest appearances from DeLay and Frist among other Republican office holders? The one where they plan on defining anyone who opposes a Bush judicial nominee as being against Christianity?

A government where every government sanctioned public expression of Christianity, every law based on conservative Christian values that disregards the rights of non-Christians will be valid because no court can say otherwise is just as much a theocracy as your willfully narrow definition of it.

Jim S:

Really? The Right wants to do away with the Constitution and judicial review? Wow. And here I thought we were the originalists and strict-constructionists.

Possibly if the Dems in the Senate could come up with a real reason to oppose Bush's judicial nominees, not just pronounce them "out of the mainstream" from their positions in the backwater, the contention that it's Christian judges who these same Dems tend to oppose would have less traction. Of course, if the "real reason" is Bush-hatred, that tracks fairly closely with Christianity-distrust, based on the left's rhetoric about Bush's personal faith and its implications for society.

I thought the bulk of the federal judiciary already subscribed to the religion of Cultural Marxism. They may not believe in an afterlife but Cultural Marxism AkA Multicult AKA "Diversity" is no more supported by science than Pentecostal Christianity.

Jim S, do your circulatory system a favor and don't touch the Internet for a couple weeks. Nobody that I can see "proved incapable of reading" your words, least of all Jane. A couple argued that DeLay Dobson et al flat out weren't after a theocracy, sure, but what of it? If they're wrong, tell them why without resorting to invective. And the rest simply expressed cynicism that any extreme view would come to pass, which is hardly a reading incapability.

Or at least, on their part -- maybe it is you that is "incapable of reading any words that disagree with you without twisting them so as to make it easier for you to easily dismiss them."

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