Love and death

Many Goat Rope readers from West Virginia are doubtless familiar with my friend the Rev. Jim Lewis, a "retired" Episcopal priest and tireless fighter for justice. And if you know Jim, you also knew Judy, his beloved wife with whom he shared a strong connection for 59 years.

With absolutely no disrespect intended to Jim, Judy was the toughest one. Judy recently passed after a decades-long battle with cancer.

Jim regularly publishes his "Notes from Under the Fig Tree," which I have frequently linked here. The latest edition is a very moving tribute to Judy.

Whether you knew her or know Jim or not, it's a very moving meditation on love, marriage, death and all those things. It moved me and I'm not easily movable. You can read it here.

It reminded me of some lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116:

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickles' compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
  If this be error and upon me proved,
  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

That's all for today.

The results are in

A couple of days ago, I asked Goat Rope readers to weigh in on a terrible tale of marital betrayal that involved not the usual stuff but rather Netflix.

To briefly recap. Here's the deal. Both husband and wife enjoy watching Mad Men. However, when the female partner was away, the male--it still mortifies me to even relate this--watched it alone and then sent it back. Read the whole post here.

Several people have responded, although they didn't necessarily do so in the comment part of the blog.

One commentor agreed to me that this was a sin that Dante would have cast into the lowest depths of the inferno and did so in imitation of the Tuscan Bard:

"Abandon hope, all ye
who return to Netflix the DVD
before the spousal unit
has had a chance to watch it"

Another reader took the opposite position, saying "Madder than a hatter? Madder than an adder with a stone in its bladder? I think it's OK if the viewing was solo, not with the neighbor gal."

So adamant was this person that when I further argued the perfidy of the case, I received this reply: "So re-order it--I think the cat's got your brain!"

(In fairness, while I don't necessarily disagree with that assessment, I think it's an entirely separate issue.)

Still another respondent, all the way from Italy, took my side--but assumed I was the guilty party! The message read,

"I think you (excuse me 'he') should get the maximum punishment. You are talking SERIOUS marital transgression here!"

(Once again, in my own defense let me state that while I am a wretched sinner capable of many an atrocity, up to and possibly including cannibalism, even I have my standards.)

Last word: this correspondence from a fellow gentleman goat farmer suggests an altogether alternative approach to such issues:

"Save series for viewing with significant other and substitute porn while she's gone...
That way there will be no conflict."

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Have a nice weekend, y'all. I'm glad we sorted that one out.

You be the judge

Image by way of wikipedia.

Far be it from El Cabrero to ever discuss, gossip or blog about the marital woes of my friends, having a surfeit of my own. Recently, however, I learned of an incident so egregious, so heinous that I am not sure forgiveness for it can be found in this or any other world.

It was of an order of magnitude that would seem to tax the very mercy of Our Lord and Our Lady and the boundless compassion of Amida Buddha.

And it had to do not with the sins of the flesh, nor with cruelty or avarice, but rather with Netflix.

Let's suppose that a couple, otherwise happily married up to this point, enjoyed watching a series together. Let's call it Mad Men.

Now imagine that one partner is away and is unavailable for shared family time of watching 1960s males behaving badly.

The honorable thing, worthy of the praise of decent folk everywhere, would be to forgo the pleasure of the show until the beloved's return.

Still, given the frailty of human nature, it might be forgiven if one watched it alone and then watched it again without complaint upon the joyous reunion.

Less praiseworthy but still permissible would be to watch it, keep the disc and encourage the partner to watch it as convenient.

But no. Imagine the sheer perfidy--it makes the angels weep to think on it!--of watching the disc solo and then sending it back in the mail before the beloved even had a chance to watch.

Did Heaven look on this and not send aid?

I'm trying to think of where Dante might have classified this sin in his Inferno. Not with the sins of intemperance, which got off the easiest. Nor with the violent, who occupied the next rung down. As I see, the minute the US Postal Service became involved, this became an act of video betrayal, placing the offender  at risk of lying frozen in the ice beside Caiaphas and near the three headed body of Satan, chewing forever on Judas, Brutus and Cassius.

In fact, one of those three guys might even get a break for the first time in 2000 or so years...

(The fact that the video marital betrayal occurred with a video about marital betrayal only adds a post-modern veneer to a primal iniquity.)

This one is too tough for me to call. What do you think, Gentle Reader? Is redemption possible here?

LINKS? Schminks!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: NINTH CIRCLE OF YOU KNOW WHERE

For the hell of it

I'm not sure what this says about the state of marital bliss at Goat Rope Farm, but the Spousal Unit and I plan to celebrate Valentine's Day by watching a 1911 silent film adaptation of Dante's Inferno.

OBAMA'S BUDGET. Here's a preliminary take by Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

MORE ON MINE SAFETY AND DRUG TESTING here.

ANIMAL ART, ANYONE? Click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

More on the whole zombie thing

I have mentioned more than once that my over-educated daughter has an inordinate fascination with zombies. Prompted by her repeated expressions of concern, I have undertaken extensive research and watched one episode of The Walking Dead.

 On the basis of this scientific research, I have developed what I call the Cabrero Theorem of Zombie Apocalypses, which should be worth a Nobel Prize. It goes like this: the survivability of a zombie outbreak is inversely proportional to their intelligence. Or, conversely, it is directly proportionate to their stupidity.

(In other words, if they are smart, communicative and can use tools, we're gonna get eaten.)

((But then if they were, would they really be zombies?))

 You can quote me on this, but please use a footnote.

NO DIRECT CONNECTION, but how about that US House of Representatives?

STIRRING UP A HORNET'S NEST. A local controversy with racial overtones is brewing in Charleston, where Kanawha County school officials are resisting a community-led effort to name the new West Side Elementary School after Mary Snow, a great African American educator.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MARRIAGE is discussed here.

  GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Regarding marriage and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Here come the Magyars! A painting of Prince Arpad and his followers crossing the Carpathians by way of wikipedia.

For several years, I've been making my way, a little at a time, through the unabridged version of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it might have something to do with the ability of the author to turn a phrase. They knew a thing or two about that in the 18th century.

I've gotten through most of it and only have a scant 500-600 pages to go. Some parts are a slow slog, but my interest picks up here and there.

Recently, I've stumbled upon a section directly relevant to my marriage. Some years a go, I committed matrimony, as my late father used to say, with a female of Hungarian extraction. A Magyar if you will.

A few days back, I got to Gibbon's discussion of the migration of the Hungarians into Europe and took great delight in reading them aloud to the Spousal Unit. Here are a few sample passages that I rushed to share:

When the black swarm of Hungarians first hung over Europe, about nine hundred years after the Christian era, they were mistaken by fear and superstition for the Gog and Magog of the Scriptures, the signs and forerunners of the end of the world.

and

Except the merit and fame of military prowess, all that is valued by mankind appeared vile and contemptible to these barbarians, whose native fierceness was stimulated by the consciousness of numbers and freedom....Their simplicity has been praised; yet they abstained only from the luxury they had never known: whatever they saw they coveted; their desires were insatiate, and their sole industry was the hand of violence and rapine.

and

...mercy they rarely asked, and more rarely bestowed: both sexes were accused as equally inaccessible to pity; and their appetite for raw flesh might countenance the popular tale that they drank the blood and feasted on the hearts of the slain.

I thought she would be pleased by this affirmation of her heritage and my efforts of cultural competence, but it didn't seem to work.

I guess you just can't be nice to some people.

THE STATE OF THE YOUNG. Here's an interesting report on how young Americans are doing.

OBSERVATIONS TO OCCUPIERS. Here's a well known linguist talking to young activists.

A CERTAIN DISGRACEFUL CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE is meeting to see how much damage it can inflict on the American people...if we let it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Seriously but not literally

I guess one mark of a great theologian is that they have something to say even to people outside of their religious tradition. Several names come to mind in this context: Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich. And Reinhold Niebuhr would certainly be on many people's short list.

Niebuhr was born in Missouri in 1892, the son of a pastor in the German Evangelical tradition. He followed in his father's footsteps and served as a pastor in industrial Detroit for several years, where he criticized the brutality of the factory system.

From 1928 until 1960 he taught theology at Union Theological Seminary and for most of those years was very active in political life. In the 1930s he supported the Socialist Party but later became something of a New Deal pragmatist and political realist. He has been claimed by people across the political spectrum, from progressives to neo-cons.

His theology is sometimes described as neo-orthodox, which takes the Biblical and Christian theological tradition seriously if not literally. Above all, Niebuhr takes the idea of sin very seriously indeed and applies it broadly to human social life.

I think one reason I like him so much is that this is one of the few areas in which El Cabrero is in the orthodox camp.

One of his most famous books is the 1932 Moral Man and Immoral Society, parts of which holds up remarkably well. More on that tomorrow.

GOING LOCAL. This item looks at the importance of local economies.

HARD SCIENCE. Here's some research on marital felicity.

ARCHAEOLOGY MADE EASY. New technology makes it possible to map ancient civilizations in a fraction of the time required by traditional methods.

IT PASSED. NOW WHAT? Now that health care reform is the law of the land, it will take a lot of education and outreach to help people understand what it is and isn't. Here's what local groups in WV are planning to do.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A children's paradox

Image by William Blake.

I attended an event yesterday at which Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone spoke, along with WV Senator Jay Rockefeller and WV First Lady Gayle Manchin. Canada is a dynamic and entertaining speaker and he said something I wish I'd have written down exactly. Since I misplaced my pen, a not altogether infrequent event, I'll have to paraphrase.

The topic of the gathering was investing in children and it was noted that rhetoric about children (most speakers seem to be in favor of them) seldom matches action. He noted that when advocating that resources be put into early childhood education and development, people are often told that while this or that measure may be a good idea, there isn't any money available to do it.

He said, much better than I'm about to, that while we're often not willing to put more resources into quality education for children, as a society we seem to be more than willing to pay any price to cover the cost of not educating them. He noted that one seldom hears of a judge saying to a young person in trouble that while he'd like to lock him up for a really long time, there are no resources to do it.

More Okinawa pictures to come tomorrow.

THE POLITICS OF EDUCATION are starting to get interesting in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

YOU MUST SEE this New Yorker cartoon.

IS MARRIAGE GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH? The conventional wisdom is yes, but it kind of looks like the quality of the marriage is the main thing. In the interests of marital harmony, I will forgo the opportunity to make a snide remark.

MINER'S MEMORIAL. WV Governor Joe Manchin announced a memorial service for the 29 miners killed in the Massey disaster to be held in Beckley this Sunday. At last word, President Obama and Vice President Biden plan to attend.

NOT EXACTLY NEWSWORTHY. Rush Limbaugh tried to blame Massey's Upper Big Branch mine disaster on the United Mine Workers union. The fact that it was a non-union mine may limit the utility of this assertion, although true believers will no doubt keep the faith.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A matter of scale

The long view. A Hubble image of deep space by way of wikipedia.

El Cabrero is a big fan of lecture series produced by The Teaching Company (and the libraries that buy them). At the moment, I'm in the midst of one about "Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity" by Dr. David Christian.

I enjoy light subjects...

Anyhow, he had some interesting ideas about getting a handle on the age of the universe (over 13 billion according to recent estimates). To make it easier to picture, he shrinks the scale a billion times.

If the universe was 13 years old,

*earth would have been formed five years ago;

*the first multi-celled organisms showed up seven months ago;

*after a successful run of several weeks, dinosaurs would have gotten wiped out three weeks ago;

*the first hominids appeared 53 minutes ago;

*agriculture started five minutes ago;

*the first agrarian civilizations got going three minutes ago; and

*industrial societies would have been around for six seconds.

Our part of the show is just getting started....or maybe it's just a short feature.

TIME is one of the themes of the Rev. Jim Lewis' latest edition of Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

THE PRICE OF HAPPINESS. The scientific quest to understand consumer behavior continues.

A CURIOUS CONNECTION seems to exist between marriage and obesity.

NOT HIS BEST. The late writer Michael Harrington may have helped inspire the 1960s War on Poverty, but some of his ideas about the "culture of poverty" did some harm.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The fog of war

There are plenty of good reasons for reading the classics, such as the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid. One of the best I've found is that it's a pretty good description of real life.

El Cabrero doesn't spend a lot of time at the legislature of my beloved state of West Virginia, but I was there enough this time to have a little mock Homeric deja vu.

In the Iliad, the tide of battle often switches back and forth, as various humans fight away and as various gods intervene here and there. No one really knows everything that is going on. As in the Aeneid, Rumor is the swiftest of the gods.

In the case of WV, the great god Randomness seems to have a lot of clout as well. Also prominent deities are Hades, god of wealth, Hermes, god of merchants and thieves, not to mention the great god Biscuit, patron of those who oppose menu labels with calorie information and the god of the gutless whose name escapes me at the moment.

At crucial times, Zeus weighs the fates of the combatants on his golden scales, which tip one way or another.

Of the many skirmishes this time, one of the most important ones had to do with the fate of WV's unemployment compensation fund, which is heading towards emptiness in the non-Buddhist sense.

A decent version passed the state senate, which included things that neither labor nor business was all that happy with. Then things hit the house side and everything was on again. In the end, a decent bill seemed to pass after some amendments.

The tide went one way and then another and even people I usually turn to find out what is really going on wasn't all that sure what was happening.

It can be quite a show but, alas, it is an epic without a bard.

AFTER THE BUST, a boom in bankruptcies.

WHAT'S NEXT? How bout doga, or yoga with dogs? While we're at it...

BETTER THAN A DOG? That may have been a factor in Charles Darwin's decision to marry. I could think of any number of things to say but will relinquish the opportunity.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The bed of Odysseus

Odysseus and Penelope by Francesco Primaticcio (1563), courtesy of wikipedia.

Along with links and comments about current events, the ongoing theme at Goat Rope for quite a while now has been the Odyssey of Homer. El Cabrero is striving mightily to wind it up but it takes a while to stop at train or turn a ship around. I'm trying though.

Whatever else you can say about Odysseus, as strange as it may seem he really did have a loving bond with his wife Penelope. This is true despite his 20 years of wandering and the occasional dalliance with a goddess or two. After all, he gave up Calypso's offer of immortality to go home to her.

One symbol of the power of that bond is the story of their bed. Toward the end of the epic, Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, gradually reveals himself to his family and faithful servants. It's hard to tell when the recognition occurred since they are all operating under stress from the threat of more than 100 insolent suitors. It's sort of a game of classics geeks to speculate about what did Penelope know and when.

Penelope in particular is skeptical of anyone who claims to have knowledge of Odysseus after many years of lies and rumors. She also fears being deceived by someone who claims to be her husband. When at last they talk, she pretends to doubt him, which leads him to protest

"Strange woman! So hard--the gods of Olympus
made you harder than any other woman in the world!
What other wife could have a spirit so unbending?
Holding back from her husband, home at last for her
after bearing twenty years of brutal struggle."

As a way of giving him a final test (or of just messing with him), she asks the maid to move their bed so that the stranger can sleep on it--alone.

Now here's the thing about that bed. It is absolutely immovable by any mortal, have been built around the stump of an olive tree. He is devastated at the thought that anyone could have moved it:

"Woman--your words, they cut me to the core!
Who could move my bed? Impossible task,
even for some skilled craftsman--unless a god
came down in person, quick to lend a hand,
lifted out with ease and moved it elsewhere.
Not a man on earth, not even at peak strength,
would find it easy to prise it up and shift it, no,
a great sign, a hallmark lies in its construction."

With that, she knows she's got her man:

"...now, since you have revealed such overwhelming proof-
the secret sign of our bed, which no one's ever seen
but you and I and a single maid, Actoris,
the servant my father gave me when I came,
who kept the doors of our room you built so well...
you've conquered my heart, my hard heart, at last!"

The goddess Athena even gives the couple a special break:

She held back the night, and night lingered long
at the western edge of the earth, while in the east
she reined in Dawn of the golden throne at Ocean's banks.
commanding her not to yoke the windswift team that brings men light...

They had a lot of catching up to do. The lengthened night gave them time to love, talk and sleep.

There are some powerful images in the Odyssey, like Penelope's loom, and this is one of them. The image of this immovable bed symbolizes a deep bond between a couple that not even the ravages of the years can uproot. You don't see a whole lot of that these days.

OH GOOD. The US lost 159,000 jobs in September, the biggest loss since March 2003, according to this Jobs Byte from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, this snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute looks at trade deficit related job losses in 2007.

HOMO ECONOMICUS don't live around here.

WAKE UP. Here's an item on the medical utility of mindfulness meditation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A DAUNTING JOURNEY

Circe, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the Odyssey of Homer, but you will also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

After many ordeals, Odysseus and his men have it pretty good on the island of Circe. As he put it:

...there we sat at ease,
day in, day out, till a year had run its course,
feasting on sides of meat and drafts of heady wine...
But then, when the year was through and the seasons wheeled by
and the months waned and the long days came round again,
my loyal comrades took me aside and prodded,
'Captain, this is madness!
High time you thought of your own home at last,
if it really is your fate to make it back alive
and reach your well-build house and native land.'

Circe is cool with all that (unlike the other nymph Calypso in a similar situation). She promises to help but warns him that he must undertake yet another journey if he is ever to make it home:

'Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, old campaigner,
stay no more in my house against your will.
But first another journey calls. You must travel down
to the House of Death and the awesome one, Persephone,
there to consult the ghost of Tiresias, seer of Thebes,
the great blind prophet whose mind remains unshaken.
Even in death--Persephone has given him wisdom,
everlasting vision to him and him alone..
the rest of the dead are empty, flitty shades.'

It will be a dangerous trip, beyond the confines of the know world. It sounds like the dead "lived" underground beyond the Mediterranean somewhere in the Atlantic, which the ancient Greeks considered to be the river Oceanus. Neither he nor his men are glad to hear the news. She gives him final instructions for his task and helps him on his way.

The way you know you've really arrived as a mythological hero, by the way, is to take a trip to the land of the dead. Odysseus will join the company of Orpheus, Heracles, and Theseus. In future years, Aeneas and Dante will make the trip as well.

Come to think of it, I guess we all will, one way or another.

AMERICAN HUNGER. Here's an item from AARP on the growing problem of hunger and food insecurity in the US.

OCCUPATIONS have their problems, as economist Joseph Stiglitz discusses in this op-ed on Iraq and Afghanistan.

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT in helping the economy grow is discussed here.

PUT MONEY IN THY PURSE. Financial compatibility may be the key to a good marriage.

RELIGION ON THE BRAIN, literally.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, if you feel like a theological workout, here's an interesting paper on the history of Christian views of warfare.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MEET THE KIDS

Athena, courtesy of wikipedia. She can make a really good friend, but don't get on her bad side.

The theme at Goat Rope lately is the Odyssey of Homer, along with news and comments about current events. The series started Aug. 4. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

Yesterday we met some of the older generation of Olympic gods and the children of the "royal family" of Zeus and Hera. Below are the rest of the gang.

Several gods are the result of Zeus' various liaisons. He fathered Apollo and Artemis from the titan Leto. Apollo is a youthful archer god associated with healing, sudden death, music, poetry, and prophecy while Artemis is the virgin goddess of wild things, the hunt and women in childbirth. Later Apollo would be associated with reason, moderation and individuation.

Hermes was the son of Zeus and the earth goddess Maia (several goddesses were manifestations of an earth divinity). An interesting character, he is a divine messenger and is associated with borders, exchanges, merchants and thieves. He also guides the spirits of the dead to the underworld. Over time, Hermes became associated with the art of interpretation, hence the term hermeneutics.

The main goddess of the Odyssey is the virgin warrior goddess Athena, who was conceived by Metis (goddess of cunning or wisdom). Fearing that her offspring would overthrow his rule, Zeus swallowed Metis. Later he got a bad headache, which Hephaestus cured by striking him in the head with an axe. Athena was born full grown from the head of Zeus and is daddy's little girl. She is associated with wisdom, courage, strategy, and weaving.

(Saftey tip: don't tell her you can weave better than she can unless you want to get turned into a spider like Arachne.)

The wine god Dionysus came from another part of Zeus' anatomy and was the result of a liaison between Zeus and the human Semele. When she asked to see Zeus in his natural form she was incinerated, but Hermes sewed the fetus into Zeus' thigh, from which he was eventually born. He is the god of the vine, of wine and his worship is associated with ecstasy, frenzy and collective joy. In later times, he even seems to have displaced the elder goddess Demeter as a patron of fertility. Nietzsche would later contrast the Apollonian or rational with the Dionysian or wild.

There were other minor players but that's the main lineup.

NOTHING LIKE FAIRNESS. From the AFLCIO blog:

Most corporations, including a large majority of foreign companies doing business in the United States, pay no income taxes, according to a report released today.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that two-thirds of both American and foreign companies doing business here end up avoiding all income tax obligations to the federal government, despite corporate sales totaling $2.5 trillion.

There's more with sources and links here.

CHANGING TRENDS. Most (admittedly feeble) anti-poverty efforts in recent years have focused on women and children. Now more voices are calling for directing more attention to men.

WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? According to this NY Times article, more and more Americans are marrying to gain health benefits. (In terms of the Greek gods discussed this week, this could lead to a jurisdictional dispute between Hera, Aphrodite and Apollo.If they ask you to settle it, run.)

MOST READERS ALREADY KNEW THIS, but research suggests a good book can be just as thrilling and stimulating to the brain as watching a movie.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A RIFF ON MARRIAGE, FOLLOWED BY A REAL BUT NEGLECTED FAMILY ISSUE

Caption: These guys would do OK.

We interrupt Goat Rope's ordinary social commentary to pass on this truly random news item.

It has to do with the politics of marriage.

(St. Paul famously said that "it is better to marry than to burn." But then, he was single.)

Anyhow, check this out:

OLYMPIA, Wash. - An initiative filed by proponents of same-sex marriage would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriage annulled.

Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. That group was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington's ban on same-sex marriage.

Under the initiative, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children in order to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their marriage would be subject to annulment.

Evidently, some people got tired of hearing that marriage is for procreation only and decided to call that bluff.

“For many years, social conservatives have claimed that marriage exists solely for the purpose of procreation ... The time has come for these conservatives to be dosed with their own medicine," said WA-DOMA organizer Gregory Gadow in a printed statement. “If same-sex couples should be barred from marriage because they can not have children together, it follows that all couples who cannot or will not have children together should equally be barred from marriage."

Holy jujitsu, Batman! As the saying goes, turnabout is fair play.

NOW FOR A REAL FAMILY VALUE THE "FAMILY VALUES" CREW DOESN'T CARE ABOUT. A recent study of child well being by UNICEF found that the US and Great Britian trailed other advanced democracies:

The far-reaching analysis by UNICEF didn’t measure just family income, but also focused on meaningful factors such as whether kids live in two-parent homes, whether they eat dinner together as a family, whether they’re bullied or have fights at school, whether they’re obese, whether they dabble with drugs and sex, whether they’re vaccinated against diseases, whether they’re delinquent, and many other indicators.

Holland and Scandinavia scored at the top among 21 affluent nations — while the United States ranked 20th and Britain 21st. A top UNICEF researcher said the poor showing of the bottom pair stems partly from their worse income inequality and worse government programs such as day care and medical insurance.

“What they have in common are very high levels of inequality, very high levels of child poverty, which is also associated with inequality, and ... poorly developed services to families with children,” British professor Jonathan Bradshaw said.

Isn't it ironic that the legions that rise up in defense of so-called "family values" as a rule don't care about things like this?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED