Thanks to everyone who ordered signed copies of The Substance of Style. All orders received as of 4:00 p.m. Central Time today have been shipped Priority Mail.
The final shipment of orders, at least for now, will be Friday afternoon. So if you want a copy, please get your order in ASAP by clicking the button below. The books are $24.95 each, plus shipping. Please make sure to include a shipping address and to tell me to whom the book should be inscribed. Thanks.
To my wonderful husband.
Evan Thomas predicts that the media are "going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about them, collective glow, the two of them, that's going to be worth maybe 15 points." Do you suppose he got an early peek at the cover of Newsweek? (Quote via InstaPundit. Newsweek via my mailbox.)
In his inimitable style (well, one of the Volokhs can probably imitate him), Richard Epstein lays out the case against amending the Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. As always, he starts from the basics: "All majoritarians recognize some limitations on government. All libertarians recognize that there are some inherently political decisions that no personal rights can trump. But how to draw the balance?"
The WSJ link above should work for a few more days, but here's a further excerpt:
When President Bush, for example, talks about the need to "protect" the sanctity of marriage, his plea is a giant non sequitur because he does not explain what, precisely, he is protecting marriage against. No proponent of gay marriage wants to ban traditional marriage, or to burden couples who want to marry with endless tests, taxes and delays. All gay-marriage advocates want to do is to enjoy the same rights of association that are held by other people. Let the state argue that gay marriages are a health risk, and the answer is that anything that encourages monogamy has the opposite effect. Any principled burden of justification for the ban is not met.
But it is said that marriage is different because it is more than a private association; it is an institution licensed by the state. To which the answer is that any use of state monopoly power must avoid suspect grounds for discrimination. So the state must explain why it will favor some unions over others -- without resort to claims of public morals. The restraints on state power are the same as when the state uses its monopoly power to license drivers, or grant zoning permits.
The question here is not just whether the courts will impose their views on the people of the several states. It is whether they will allow a majority of the public to impose its will on a minority within its midst in the absence of any need for a collective decision. The claim for same-sex marriage is no weaker than any other claim of individual rights on personal and religious matters.
But since the state bans polygamy, some ask, why not also ban same sex marriages? Turn the question around, however: Why ban the former, especially by constitutional amendment, when agreed to by all parties? Incest is a different matter, with the high dangers from inbreeding. And people and poodles can't tie the knot because one half in the relationship (some would say the better half) lacks the capacity to enter into a contract.
The case against state prohibition of same-sex marriages becomes clearer when we ask how much further we are prepared to take the principle of democratic domination. Where is the limiting principle on majority power? Suppose that the proponents of gay rights get strong enough politically to require traditional churches to perform gay marriages, or to admit gay individuals into their clergy. Or to demand that people accept gay couples as tenants in their homes, even if they regard their relationship as sinful. Now the shoe is on the other foot. I think that the paramount claims of individual liberty should not have to yield to democratic decisions intended to impose an alternative enlightened view of public morals.
Given the number of Filipinos expats working all over the world, the Philippines is asking for future trouble by giving in to terrorists in Iraq. From the A.P. report:
The Philippines said Wednesday it is withdrawing its small peacekeeping contingent from Iraq early to meet the demand of kidnappers threatening to kill a captive Filipino truck driver.
The announcement, which said the pullout was beginning immediately, was a dramatic turnaround by one of Washington's biggest backers in the global war on terrorism. The Southeast Asian country earlier vowed it would not yield to pressure to move up the withdrawal, which had been scheduled for Aug. 20 when the force's mandate ends.
Fifty-one Filipino peacekeepers can't make that big a difference, but the symbolism does. Wretchard at Belmont Club has been all over this story.
I will be on PBS's new show, Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, this Friday (or Saturday or Sunday, depending on your PBS schedule), discussing The Substance of Style. The show airs Sunday at 10 a.m. on KERA in Dallas and Saturday at 12:30 a.m. (that would be late Friday night to most people) on KCET in L.A. To get times for other cities, go here.
I'll return to blogging tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, check out Marginal Revolution, which has been on a particularly good run.
I am once again taking orders for signed copies of The Substance of Style. The books are $24.95 each, plus shipping. To order, please click the button below. Make sure to include a shipping address and to tell me to whom the book should be inscribed. Thanks.
If you've already read the book and liked it, please post an Amazon review. (If you didn't like it--or haven't read it--please don't!)
Update: All book orders received through 2:00 p.m. Central Time on Monday, July 12, have been shipped Priority Mail and should arrive shortly. The next shipment will go out on Wednesday afternoon. Thanks for your interest.
Jacob Levy claims geeky fashion sense and a messy office as a defense against my suggestion that his Kerry infatuation is a sign of trying to be cool. Sorry, Jacob (whom I like very much). Bad aesthetics is no excuse. Artists aren't the only ones who fashionably hate George W. So do academics.
Vote for Kerry if you must, folks. But don't pretend you're doing it because Bush's economic policies are insufficiently free market or fiscally responsible. Kerry wouldn't be any better on economics. He'd be worse.
Update: Robert Tagorda is pessimistic about the Kerry-Edwards trade stance. On trade, Edwards is just a more photogenic version of Dick Gephardt--a new Dem but not a New Dem. He sounds more like Pat Buchanan than Bill Clinton.
I've been saying for decades that my end of the baby boom has little in common with the "baby boomers" we constantly hear about--including the most recent two presidents. The WSJ's Jeff Zaslow has a great report:
There's a great distance between Barry Manilow and Barry Bonds.
Mr. Manilow, the singer, was born in 1946, the first year of the postwar baby boom. About 76 million births later, Mr. Bonds, the baseball slugger, became one of America's last boomers. That was in 1964, when demographers say the boom ended.
Typically, those born within that period are lumped together as the "baby boom generation," as if their values, habits and product preferences are unified. In fact, as the "late-wave boomers" turn 40 this year, it's clear that the classes of 1946 and 1964 are often very different, at times resulting in alienation and even finger-pointing. It's a much-overlooked development that marketers, the media and policy-makers ignore at their peril.
John Dieffenbach, a 40-year-old attorney in Pleasantville, N.Y., says many of the oldest boomers are "a self-aggrandizing" bunch who treat him like an auxiliary member of their generation. "I'm part of their club, but don't get the benefits." He doesn't get the "benefit" of nostalgia -- being able to say he recalls when Kennedy was shot, or the Beatles arrived in America. And people his age might not receive full Social Security benefits when they retire, because the oldest boomers may strain the system.
The oldest boomers came of age at a time of affordable housing, easier acceptance to colleges and better job markets. The youngest boomers struggled through deeper recessions, crowded workplaces, and now, outsourced jobs. Younger boomers also worry that in the next decade or so, their 401(k) values will fall as retired older boomers cash out of stocks.
"I share very little culturally with a 58-year-old," Mr. Dieffenbach says. In 1986, when the media declared "Boomer Generation Turns 40," he was just 22. In 1996, when newspaper articles celebrated "Boomers Turn 50" -- counting the candles on their cakes (400,000 a day) and the cash spent on their birthday presents ($1 billion that year) -- Mr. Dieffenbach was just 32. "I'm waiting for the 'Baby Boomers are Dead' stories," he says, only half-jokingly.
My GenX youngest brother (born 1970) thinks of boomers as spoiled yuppies--the people he watched on Thirtysomething when I was only twentysomething--and doesn't associate them at all with the 1960s.
Click through to the Zaslow story. The chart alone is worth the visit.