Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics

by Charles Krauthammer

  Polygamy used to be stereotyped as the province of secretive Mormons, primitive Africans and profligate Arabs. With Big Love it moves to suburbia as a mere alternative lifestyle.

  As Newsweek notes, these stirrings for the mainstreaming of polygamy (or, more accurately, polyamory) have their roots in the increasing legitimization of gay marriage. In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one’s autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement—the number restriction (two and only two)—is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

  This line of argument makes gay activists furious. I can understand why they do not want to be in the same room as polygamists. But I’m not the one who put them there. Their argument does. Blogger and author Andrew Sullivan, who had the courage to advocate gay marriage at a time when it was considered pretty crazy, has called this the “polygamy diversion,” arguing that homosexuality and polygamy are categorically different because polygamy is a mere “activity” while homosexuality is an intrinsic state that “occupies a deeper level of human consciousness.”

  But this distinction between higher and lower orders of love is precisely what gay rights activists so vigorously protest when the general culture “privileges” (as they say in the English departments) heterosexual unions over homosexual ones. Was Jules et Jim (and Jeanne Moreau), the classic Truffaut film involving two dear friends in love with the same woman, about an “activity” or about the most intrinsic of human emotions?

  To simplify the logic, take out the complicating factor of gender mixing. Posit a union of, say, three gay women all deeply devoted to each other. On what grounds would gay activists dismiss their union as mere activity rather than authentic love and self-expression? On what grounds do they insist upon the traditional, arbitrary and exclusionary number of two?

  What is historically odd is that as gay marriage is gaining acceptance, the resistance to polygamy is much more powerful. Yet until this generation, gay marriage had been sanctioned by no society that we know of, anywhere at any time in history. On the other hand, polygamy was sanctioned, indeed common, in large parts of the world through large swaths of history, most notably the biblical Middle East and through much of the Islamic world.

  I’m not one of those who see gay marriage or polygamy as a threat to, or assault on, traditional marriage. The assault came from within. Marriage has needed no help in managing its own long, slow suicide, thank you. Astronomical rates of divorce and of single parenthood (the deliberate creation of fatherless families) existed before there was a single gay marriage or any talk of sanctioning polygamy. The minting of these new forms of marriage is a symptom of our culture’s contemporary radical individualism—as is the decline of traditional marriage—and not its cause.

  As for gay marriage, I’ve come to a studied ambivalence. I think it is a mistake for society to make this ultimate declaration of indifference between gay and straight life, if only for reasons of pedagogy. On the other hand, I have gay friends and feel the pain of their inability to have the same level of social approbation and confirmation of their relationship with a loved one that I’m not about to go to anyone’s barricade to deny them that. It is critical, however, that any such fundamental change in the very definition of marriage be enacted democratically and not (as in the disastrous case of abortion) by judicial fiat.

  Call me agnostic. But don’t tell me that we can make one radical change in the one-man, one-woman rule and not be open to the claim of others that their reformation be given equal respect.

  The Washington Post, March 17, 2006

  EMPATHY OR RIGHT?

  There are two ways to defend gay marriage. Argument A is empathy: One is influenced by gay friends in committed relationships yearning for the fulfillment and acceptance that marriage conveys upon heterosexuals. That’s essentially the case President Obama made when he first announced his change of views.

  No talk about rights, just human fellow feeling. Such an argument is attractive because it can be compelling without being compulsory. Many people, feeling the weight of this longing among their gay friends, are willing to redefine marriage for the sake of simple human sympathy.

  At the same time, however, one can sympathize with others who feel great trepidation at the radical transformation of the most fundamental of social institutions, one that, until yesterday, was heterosexual in all societies in all places at all times.

  The empathy argument both encourages mutual respect in the debate and lends itself to a political program of gradualism. State by state, let community norms and moral sensibilities prevail. Indeed, that is Obama’s stated position.

  Such pluralism allows for the kind of “stable settlement of the issue” that Ruth Bader Ginsburg once lamented had been “halted” by Roe v. Wade regarding abortion, an issue as morally charged and politically unbridgeable as gay marriage.

  Argument B is more uncompromising: You have the right to marry anyone, regardless of gender. The right to “marriage equality” is today’s civil rights, voting rights and women’s rights—and just as inviolable.

  Argument B has extremely powerful implications. First, if same-sex marriage is a right, then there is no possible justification for letting states decide for themselves. How can you countenance even one state outlawing a fundamental right? Indeed, half a century ago, states’ rights was the cry of those committed to continued segregation and discrimination.

  Second, if marriage equality is a civil right, then denying it on the basis of (innately felt) sexual orientation is, like discrimination on the basis of skin color, simple bigotry. California’s Proposition 8 was overturned by a Ninth Circuit panel on the grounds that the referendum, reaffirming marriage as between a man and woman, was nothing but an expression of bias—“serves no purpose … other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians.”

  Pretty strong stuff. Which is why it was so surprising that Obama, after first advancing Argument A, went on five days later to adopt Argument B, calling gay marriage a great example of “expand[ing] rights” and today’s successor to civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights and workers’ rights.

  Problem is: It’s a howling contradiction to leave up to the states an issue Obama now says is a right. And beyond being intellectually untenable, Obama’s embrace of the more hard-line “rights” argument compels him logically to see believers in traditional marriage as purveyors of bigotry. Not a good place for a president to be in an evenly divided national debate that requires both sides to offer each other a modicum of respect.

  No wonder that Obama has been trying to get away from the issue as quickly as possible. It’s not just the New York Times poll showing his new position to be a net loser. It’s that he is too intelligent not to realize he’s embraced a logical contradiction.

  Moreover, there is the problem of the obvious cynicism of his conversion. Two-thirds of Americans see his “evolution” as a matter not of principle but of politics. In fact, the change is not at all an evolution—a teleological term cleverly chosen to suggest movement toward a higher state of being—given that Obama came out for gay marriage 16 years ago. And then flip-flopped.

  He was pro when running for the Illinois Legislature from ultra-liberal Hyde Park. He became anti when running eight years later for the U.S. Senate and had to appeal to a decidedly more conservative statewide constituency. And now he’s pro again.

  When a Republican engages in such finger-to-the-wind political calculation (on abortion, for example), he’s condemned as a flip-flopper. When a liberal goes through a similar gyration, he’s said to have “evolved” into some more highly realized creature, deserving of a halo on the cover of a national newsmagazine.


  Notwithstanding a comically fawning press, Obama knows he has boxed himself in. His “rights” argument compels him to nationalize same-sex marriage and sharpen hostility toward proponents of traditional marriage—a place he is loath to go.

  True, he was rushed into it by his loquacious vice president. But surely he could have thought this through.

  The Washington Post, May 17, 2012

  FIRST A WALL—THEN AMNESTY

  Every sensible immigration policy has two objectives: (1) to regain control of our borders so that it is we who decide who enters, and (2) to find a way to normalize and legalize the situation of the 11 million illegals among us.

  Start with the second. No one of goodwill wants to see these 11 million suffer. But the obvious problem is that legalization creates an enormous incentive for new illegals to come.

  We say, of course, that this will be the very last, very final, never-again, we’re-not-kidding-this-time amnesty. The problem is that we say exactly the same thing with every new reform. And everyone knows it’s phony.

  What do you think was said when in 1986 we passed the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform? It turned into the largest legalization program in American history—nearly 3 million got permanent residency. And we are now back at it again with 11 million new illegals in our midst.

  How can it be otherwise? We already have a river of people coming every day knowing they’re going to be illegal and perhaps even exploited. They come nonetheless. The newest amnesty—the “earned legalization” now being dangled in front of them by proposed Senate legislation—can only increase the flow.

  Those who think employer sanctions will control immigration are dreaming. Employer sanctions were the heart of Simpson-Mazzoli. They are not only useless, they are pernicious. They turn employers into enforcers of border control. That is the job of government, not landscapers.

  The irony of this whole debate, which is bitterly splitting the country along partisan, geographic and ethnic lines, is that there is a silver bullet that would not just solve the problem but also create a national consensus behind it.

  My proposition is the following: A vast number of Americans who oppose legalization and fear new waves of immigration would change their minds if we could radically reduce new—i.e., future—illegal immigration.

  Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won’t do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put cameras. Put sensors. Put out lots of patrols.

  Can’t be done? Israel’s border fence has been extraordinarily successful in keeping out potential infiltrators who are far more determined than mere immigrants. Nor have very many North Koreans crossed into South Korea in the last 50 years.

  Of course it will be ugly. So are the concrete barriers to keep truck bombs from driving into the White House. But sometimes necessity trumps aesthetics. And don’t tell me that this is our Berlin Wall. When you build a wall to keep people in, that’s a prison. When you build a wall to keep people out, that’s an expression of sovereignty. The fence around your house is a perfectly legitimate expression of your desire to control who comes into your house to eat, sleep and use the facilities. It imprisons no one.

  Of course, no barrier will be foolproof. But it doesn’t have to be. It simply has to reduce the river of illegals to a manageable trickle. Once we can do that, everything becomes possible—most especially, humanizing the situation of our 11 million existing illegals.

  If the government can demonstrate that it can control future immigration, there will be infinitely less resistance to dealing generously with the residual population of past immigration. And, as Mickey Kaus and others have suggested, that may require that the two provisions be sequenced. First, radical border control by physical means. Then shortly thereafter, radical legalization of those already here. To achieve national consensus on legalization, we will need a short lag time between the two provisions, perhaps a year or two, to demonstrate to the skeptics that the current wave of illegals is indeed the last.

  This is no time for mushy compromise. A solution requires two acts of national will: the ugly act of putting up a fence and the supremely generous act of absorbing as ultimately full citizens those who broke our laws to come to America.

  This is not a compromise meant to appease both sides without achieving anything. It is not some piece of hybrid legislation that arbitrarily divides illegals into those with five-year-old “roots” in America and those without, or some such mischief-making nonsense.

  This is full amnesty (earned with back taxes and learning English and the like) with full border control. If we do it right, not only will we solve the problem, we will get it done as one nation.

  The Washington Post, April 7, 2006

  IN PLAIN ENGLISH—LET’S MAKE IT OFFICIAL

  Growing up (as I did) in the province of Quebec, you learn not just the joys but also the perils of bilingualism. A separate national identity, revolving entirely around “Francophonie,” became a raging issue that led to social unrest, terrorism, threats of separation and a referendum that came within a hair’s breadth of breaking up Canada.

  Canada, of course, had no choice about bilingualism. It is a country created of two nations at its birth and has ever since been trying to cope with that inherently divisive fact. The United States, by contrast blessed with a single common language for two centuries, seems blithely and gratuitously to be ready to import bilingualism with all its attendant divisiveness and antagonisms.

  One of the major reasons for America’s great success as the world’s first “universal nation,” for its astonishing and unmatched capacity for assimilating immigrants, has been that an automatic part of acculturation was the acquisition of English. And yet during the great immigration debate now raging in Congress, the people’s representatives cannot make up their minds whether the current dominance of English should be declared a national asset, worthy of enshrinement in law.

  The Senate could not bring itself to declare English the country’s “official language.” The best it could do was pass an amendment to the immigration bill tepidly declaring English the “national language.” Yet even that was too much for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, who called that resolution “racist.”

  Less hyperbolic opponents point out that granting special official status to English is simply unnecessary: America has been accepting foreign-language-speaking immigrants forever—Brooklyn is so polyglot it is a veritable Babel—and yet we’ve done just fine. What’s the great worry about Spanish?

  The worry is this. Polyglot is fine. When immigrants, like those in Brooklyn, are members of a myriad of linguistic communities, each tiny and discrete, there is no threat to the common culture. No immigrant presumes to make the demand that the state grant special status to his language. He may speak it in the street and proudly teach it to his children, but he knows that his future and certainly theirs lie inevitably in learning English as the gateway to American life.

  But all of that changes when you have an enormous, linguistically monoclonal immigration as we do today from Latin America. Then you get not Brooklyn’s successful Babel but Canada’s restive Quebec. Monoclonal immigration is new for the United States, and it changes things radically. If at the turn of the 20th century Ellis Island had greeted teeming masses speaking not 50 languages but just, say, German, America might not have enjoyed the same success at assimilation and national unity that it has.

  Today’s monoclonal linguistic culture is far from hypothetical. Growing rapidly through immigration, it creates large communities—in some places already majorities—so overwhelmingly Spanish speaking that, in time, they may quite naturally demand the rights and official recognition for Spanish that French has in French-speaking Quebec.

  That would not be the end of the world—Canada is a decent place—but the beginning of a new one for the United States, a world far more complicated and fraught with division.
History has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins, with a linguistic unity that brings a critically needed cohesion to a nation as diverse, multiracial and multiethnic as America. Why gratuitously throw away that priceless asset? How mindless to call the desire to retain it “racist.”

  I speak three languages. My late father spoke nine. When he became a naturalized American in midcentury, it never occurred to him to demand of his new and beneficent land that whenever its government had business with him—tax forms, court proceedings, ballot boxes—that it should be required to communicate in French, his best language, rather than English, his last and relatively weakest.

  English is America’s national and common language. But that may change over time unless we change our assimilation norms. Making English the official language is the first step toward establishing those norms. “Official” means the language of the government and its institutions. “Official” makes clear our expectations of acculturation. “Official” means that every citizen, upon entering America’s most sacred political space, the voting booth, should minimally be able to identify the words President and Vice President and county commissioner and judge. The immigrant, of course, has the right to speak whatever he wants. But he must understand that when he comes to the United States, swears allegiance and accepts its bounty, he undertakes to join its civic culture. In English.

  Time, June 5, 2006

  OF COURSE IT’S A PONZI SCHEME

  The Great Social Security Debate, Proposition 1: Of course it’s a Ponzi scheme.

  In a Ponzi scheme, the people who invest early get their money out with dividends. But these dividends don’t come from any profitable or productive activity—they consist entirely of money paid in by later participants.