Author: Oliver Herndon

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Reading and Film Presentations and Discussion

Hansen Ch9 ERA


In chapter 9, Hanson discusses Trump’s role as a crude messenger in the white house. He begins by addressing the criticisms and fears of liberals and Never-Trumpers with having someone so uncouth and vulgar in the White House.

Hansen responds to this by putting Trump’s vulgarity and actions in context with other presidents. He points out that Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton all regularly had scandals and problems that were much more newsworthy than Trump’s. Both Wilson and FDR experienced significant health crises that were hidden from the American public, and Kennedy and Clinton’s sexual escapades were in many cases allegedly illegal. In comparison to many of his predecessors, Trump’s wrongs are far below that which the country has previously tolerated. 

Hansen also points out that there has not been a correlation between the moral character of the president and their performance in office. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were both moral men who maintained their character in office. They are also among the most ineffective presidents in recent American history. Other presidents previously noted for their moral shortcomings were highly effective in governance. 

Hansen cites the example of Harry Truman who was crass, offensive, and sometimes even threatened his detractors with violence. A political outsider, he went against the advice of many of his aides and higher-ups in government institutions to pursue the policy that he wanted. Many of Truman’s attacks and insults wring with a Trumpian sound, and Hansen points out that Truman was a highly effective president in spite of his character; Trump can achieve a similar feat. 

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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

Huntington Ch10 ERA

In Chapter 10 of his book “Who Are We,” Huntington discusses American identity in regards to the international environment. He begins by reporting on the change in the international environment with the end of the cold war, the extensive international involvement US elites abroad lowering the salience of national identity amongst those elites, and the increase of culture as a source of identity (as opposed to ideology). 

Huntington discusses the loss of the Soviet Union as our great enemy not being particularly helpful to national identity and argues that enemies are an effective ‘identity builder’ for a group. He also highlights the broad disconnect between the beliefs of the cosmopolitan elites and the nationalistic public. This increasing divide leads to evermore disjointed policy preferences because the elites fill the foreign policy administrative arm and sit atop the most powerful interest groups. 

What I found most interesting was his discussion of the political influence of foreign groups who are connected to their home countries. Connection to homelands like chain migration, remittances, and maintaining communication with friends and relatives are all regular elements of immigration in an increasingly connected international environment. Attempting to politically influence policy in a foreign country to benefit your home country is an entirely different caliber of behavior. In the beginning of this book, Huntington cites that many of the founding fathers were in favor of restricting immigration because of the ideologies they would bring and the impact it would have on democracy, and I think that they would consider immigrants attempting to change our government’s policy to help their home country as direct evidence of immigration’s harm. The government is supposed to work for its citizens, and the prospect of foreign nationals swaying our policy potentially against our interests and towards their own seems to be anti-American. 

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Short Essays and Responses

Herndon SE 5

Regnerus’ argument, and the evidence he musters to support it, shows clearly that the current mating and dating culture/market is harmful to the interests of most women and just makes it easier for men to get the central good they want from women (sexual access) without any real exchange of other goods that women desire (e.g., emotional attachment, long-term monogamous commitment). As a society, we should rethink this piece of our culture and try to find ways to adjust it in ways that would make the experiences of women like Alyssa (who is described at length in the book) more fulfilling and healthy.

In his book “Cheap Sex”, Mark Regnerus details the dramatic change in the developed world’s relationship with sex that has slowly emerged since the advent of birth control and digital pornography. In concert with the sexual revolution and the full integration of women into educational institutions and the workforce, the ability to have sex while preventing pregnancy has greatly impacted dating, marriage, sex (with who, when, why), and the framework through which relationships are evaluated. Paramount among these effects has been an altered mating marketplace where men have gained an increasing advantage. The current mating and dating market has lowered the market price of sex, making it easier for men to get the goods they want from women (sexual access) without any real exchange for the goods women desire such as emotional attachment and long term monogamous commitment.

The abundance of sexual opportunity provided by women individually has the collective outcome increasing men’s power in relationships, with power being defined as “the function of the dependence of one actor on another.” (37) When sex is cheap, female partners are increasingly replaceable for men which diminishes their incentive to stay in relationships, especially ones where demands for commitment or exclusivity are being placed. Therefore, the more the price falls, the more difficult it will be for women to acquire the goods they value. 

Sexual access has become unfathomably cheap for men compared to the price in resources and commitment their great grandparents had to pay for the same. The relationships in America data cited by Regnerus highlights the fact that “45% of women said they first had sex with their current (or most recent) partner no later than the first two weeks of their relationship,” (98) and about 15% of those interactions took place only on the first date. Every woman that Regnerus cites from his personal interview references giving men sex early on in their relationships, expecting almost nothing in return, and even granting sexual requests faster when with a man who is not perceived as ‘relationship material.’

The shifting power dynamic in the sexual exchange has altered the marriage market by dramatically increasing competition amongst females. The bifurcated mating market characterizing today’s society is uneven; “there are more men in the sex corner of the pool than women and more women than men over in the marriage corner.” (35) As sex has cheapened, men have become less marriageable because “the wearying detour of getting education and career prospects to qualify for sex” (149) can now be easily skipped. The supply of marriageable men has lowered during the same time frame in which women have become increasingly economically independent and have “altered the criterion of marriageability to include not just the economic prospects of men but other latent traits as well” (148) such as “personal traits like affability, flexibility, personality, social support, and ideological homogeneity.” (149) As competition for the goods women want increases, the percentage of them who will end up in a situation that they are happy about will fall. 

Alyssa, one of the women Regnerus has interviewed, has run the gamut of cheap sexual experiences that are commonplace in today’s society. Her use of pornography started at age 9, her first sexual relationship was at age 15, she was addicted to porn in college, and has had more than 20 partners before settling into a cohabitation relationship at the age of 27. (119) But now, her interests have shifted; she lost her “interest in partner hopping and for experiencing… new people and new syles and new lifestyles,” (149) instead wanting to “settle down [and] stay put.” (149) Due to the changes to the mating market, however, the odds that Alyssa will get what she wants are increasingly slim. Alyssa’s life may end up looking like another of Regnerus’ interviewees. He leads off the book by presenting the story of Sarah, a 35-year-old who is childless and unable to locate commitment from men no matter where she looks. Unless the ‘cheap sex’ element of our culture is rethought, the altered sexual market will result in ever-increasing numbers of women finding themselves stuck in this seemingly inescapable conundrum. 

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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

What men and women fear most – Evolution 4

In the “Moral Animal” the author presents a study about what undesirable actions by one’s partner to men and women react more, infidelity or falling in love with someone else. The study showed that, when asked to imagine their partner sleeping with someone else, men exhibited a much more extreme mental/emotional/physiological response than when imagining their partner falling in love with someone else. For women, it was quite the opposite, imagining their partner cheating on them “romantically” was more infuriating than the prospect of them cheating on them sexually. 

The evolutionary rationale behind this is as follows. For a man, if their partner cheats on them sexually, it increases the likelihood that he is going to invest his paternal resources propagating someone else’s genetic material. All of the men who have done this throughout human history are no longer in the gene pool, and thus genes which enable behaviors that avoid this situation have spread throughout the male species throughout its evolution. For a woman, emotional cheating indicates that a man will likely share more of his resources with the other woman’s offspring than with hers, decreasing the chance that her offspring will be evolutionarily fit. 

One of the most pertinent questions that society today has to answer is whether knowledge of the efficacy of birth control can change our evolutionary predilections. To a man in the evolutionary environment, gaining sexual access to a woman too quickly tended to decrease the chances of commitment and male paternal investment because ease of her participating in sexual activity with a new mate indicated higher chances of infidelity. Does that still hold true if people know that any amount of sexual activity will most likely not lead to offspring, and thus males are largely safe from being caught raising somebody else’s offspring? Maybe it is the introduction of sex into modern relationships so rapidly that is causing me to shy away from marriage and avoid commitment to current sexual partners. 

Regnerus potentially validates this point on page 65, though he does not go into the evolutionary logic behind it. “Men are more apt to morally disrespect such women as possible long-term partners and spouses due to their concern about future fidelity in the exchange relationship. At the same time, they value them as possible short term partners.” 

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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

Why can men separate the sex/marriage market – Evolution 3

Regnerus focuses a lot on the ability of men to view the mating market as bifurcated, seeing a clear distinction between acting with sex in mind and acting with marriage (commitment, reproduction, male paternal investment) in mind. Their ability to do that can be theorized to be an outgrowth of men’s most lucrative evolutionary mating strategy in the evolutionary environment. 

The theory goes that men will experience the highest evolutionary rates of return if they keep in mind the high rates of paternal investment necessary to rear successful offspring. Part of the male reproductive strategy is to find a highly desirable female who is extremely evolutionarily fit, reproduce with her, and invest his paternal resources there. However, any children he has with other women still have a chance of survival without his resources, and thus the other part of the strategy is to have ‘quick flings’ to produce offspring with other women in the hopes that they will reach adulthood and be successful without him. It is likely that at least some will make it adulthood.  

Evident in this pattern is a clear distinction between sex and marriage when it comes to evolutionary goals. This concept is commonly thought of in politically incorrect terms as the “Madonna-whore dichotomy,” where men view women as candidates for either “cheap sex” to use Regnerus’ words or for commitment and sacrifice. The advent of birth control has not changed this dynamic, rather, it has simply allowed it to run amok but with far less reproductive consequences.