The martini of public policy.

I made a comment in this Yglesias post, which I won't reprint here because, as I said once, people who quote themselves are tedious. Anyway Russel Arben Fox replied:

"Careful Delicious Pundit--you'll end up making us left traditionalists' point for us. Generally speaking, do I think the family is helpless before capitalism? No. But[...] it is reasonable to argue that families today need a more 'affirmative' state to support their efforts to carve out an equally affirmative space within the relentless creative destruction of capitalism."

And who is to say that I am not a left traditionalist? Well, my wife, probably. Still, I affect the pose of a left traditionalist, if I am not too busy. Indeed, those "defenders" of marriage ought to leave the gays alone and lobby for universal healthcare if they cared more about the family than nursing their prejudices.

The only other thing I will add is the observation that capitalism, in its balls-out, original-recipe version, was completely unfamily-friendly, unless Mom and the kids working at the same factory counts. This is why we must cut the Hogarthian gin of capitalism with the French vermouth of socialism so as to make it palatable; and, just as martinis today are served much too dry, so our worship of creative destruction has gotten out of hand.