CapitalistImperialistPig

The IOWA legislature was debating some legislation to stigmatize or otherwise harass gay parents, and a nineteen year old student (raised by gay parents)decided to share his experience in testimony against the bill. His testimony went viral and was widely praised. Steve Landsburg, blogger, economist, and a favorite punching bag of mine thought this would be a good occasion to demonstrate that he is obnoxious - he is good at finding such occasions, and published this critique . Some people claim (perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly, perhaps absurdly — I lean toward the latter) that gay people, on average, are less successful as parents. In a video that’s begun to go viral, University of Iowa engineering student Zach Wahls attempts to refute this notion without offering a shred of evidence beyond a single cherry-picked case (his own) to prove that children of gay parents sometimes turn out just fine (except, perhaps, for their ability to reason): His complaint seems to be that Zach presente...

Is this the same kind of question as "Are you happy?" Steve Landsburg thinks so, but I have a different opinion. The title question pretty clearly refers to some external standard, and in particular to other people, almost certainly others of your sex and age group - adult or child. The second question clearly refers to a purely internal standard, and almost certainly to an absolute rather than relative sense. I could be pretty unhappy even if I was slightly less unhappy than I was yesterday - or contrarywise. So how could an ostensibly bright guy like Landsburg - here I am referring to an external standard of IQ tests, professional accomplishment, etc - make such a dumb error of category? I don't know, but I have a guess - systematic intellectual dishonesty. All this is apropos of a couple of Landsburg posts, each of which, like Tolstoy's unhappy families (Anna Karenina), is unhappy in its own way. Tuesday's Burg deals with freedom and prosperity, with fre...