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The
McMarshall Plan
In his book review "How the West
Won," Martin Walker makes an awkward attempt to criticize the West for its
air of superiority after victory in the Cold War. Although he doesn't want to
blame U.S. policy-makers for fomenting and maintaining the Cold War or for
failing to seize supposed golden opportunities to make a deal with Stalin, he
doesn't want to let them off the hook either.
Martin buttresses his case
with one of the poorest spokesmen imaginable: Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's
foreign minister. Martin cites his rants against American cultural influence
and its "economic enslavement" of Europe, all of which are just an echo of the
Moscow line against the Marshall Plan. Stalin didn't want any Americans around
to influence anybody or to see anything, and as his puppet, Molotov chirped
along. Now Martin repeats his words as if they were prophetic.
As far as I can judge,
Martin has no liking for these revolting characters, nor for the regime they
represented, which was the most disastrous social experiment in history.
Rather, he wants to complain about the current Americanization of Europe: the
fast foods, the consumerism, the fake entertainment, the destruction of native
cultures, the profiteering, and the corporations.
Agreed:
It is horrible. But I do not agree that the Cold War was about that. To blame
the Marshall Plan for the transmission of mindless high-tech adventure films
into every city of Europe is akin to blaming Thomas Jefferson's belief in free
speech for Hustler magazine and porn shops in every city in America.
Neither Jefferson nor Marshall quite had those things in mind.
-- Gary Kern
Back in
Baby's Arms
As a fellow failed
"Ferberizer," I enjoyed Robert Wright's most recent column, "Go Ahead--Sleep With
Your Kids." But I found it curious that he ignored a relevant phenomenon
that he described so clearly in The Moral Animal : the mother-offspring
conflict over weaning. This conflict is inevitable in mammalian life because
offspring seek to monopolize maternal resources as long as possible, but their
mothers seek to divide resources between all present and future offspring.
Sounds a little like Wright's
"Ferberizing" experiences to me. To be fair, Wright is talking about sleeping
with a newborn infant, before the age when weaning would naturally become an
issue. However, from my own experience, a newborn becomes a 12-month-old and
then an 18-month-old rather quickly. Unfortunately, mine were no less vocal in
their objections to being kicked out of our bed at those ages than when they
were infants.
Also, the resulting obstacle
to the parents' sex life is not the incidental side effect that Wright
suggests. Rather it may serve to delay the conception of a rival for maternal
resources--both directly (by literally coming between Mom and Dad) and
indirectly (by tending to prolong breast-feeding and, therefore, to suppress
ovulation for a longer period).
In the
end, I agree that principles of evolutionary psychology tend to support the
argument for sleeping with your infant. But those same principles also suggest
that if you choose to do so, you won't avoid the noisy battle of wills with
your child--you'll merely postpone it.
-- Mark Weaver
The
Family That Lies Together, Thrives Together
I was gratified to read
Robert Wright's article "Go Ahead--Sleep With Your Kids," but I think it missed the
larger point. With modern America's emphasis on independence and individualism,
you might say that the early separation from parents is sending a forceful
message to their children that they are going to have to learn that American
virtue of self-reliance. Societies in which children sleep with parents bring
up the kids to be cooperative members of their social group. Though I
appreciate the personal freedoms I enjoy as an adult, I think our culture is
overly fearful of the dependent nature of children, and so we try to force them
(prematurely) to be the atomized individuals that industrial society
demands.
Another
influence on this debate is the Freudian trend of seeing all family
relationships as sexually charged. As Wright implies in passing, there is a
feeling that sleeping with children is vaguely incestuous. However, incest
tends to occur among families that are distant, not ones that are intimate.
Everyday contact, in fact, seems to take away the glamour.
-- Amy Reeves
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