Back from Provo

So the reason you’ve been missing me is that I just attended a really intensive John Adams Center conference at BYU.

The conference was on the family—and included all kinds of incredible presentations. Paul Rahe turns out to be quite the defender of the traditional family from many points of view ancient and modern. Mark Blitz talked eloquently and clearly about Plato on fathers and sons. And Nalin Ranasinghe turns out to have read everything worth reading with careful attention, and he gave the most entertaining and personal—not to mention brilliant—talk on Homer (not the dad on the Simpsons) I’ve ever heard. There was a lot more. I will say there’s a strong case to be made for the proposition that Mark and Nalin have written the most engaging books on Plato in recent years. All honor to Ralph Hancock for making each JA event better than the one before.

On the presidential campaign: Pete is right we’re in big trouble. Cain’s collapse may be in slow motion, but that makes it all the more disturbing to watch. Paul Rahe, the theorist of the TEA PARTY, called my attention to sources just as distrubing on Romney’s inauthenticity as a social conservative. In Paul’s view, Romney works very hard but isn’t as smart as he sometimes appears. Nobody has an alternative to Mitt, though. Optimism is fading that Obama can be beaten. How can such a political opportunity not attract a single man or woman of the right talent, ambition, and personal integrity?

Paul and I continue to disagree on the reason for the implosion of our entitlement regime. Paul is all about the pathologies of dependency, including the calculation not to have children, given that government that will take care of you when you’re old. My response is that nobody can actually live decently on Social Security, and most Americans, unlike most Europeans, still regard their parents and grandparents as their responsibility. I still say that the implosion is due to our creeping individualism—with its good result of more old people than ever and its bad result of fewer and fewer children. Paul is pretty confident that the family of old comes back as the welfare state fades away. I doubt that liberated, autonomous women will leave the workplace and get back home to take care of loads of kids, and so individuals will be in some ways more lonely and on their own than ever.