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Ross Douthat and the Meaning of History We inhabit a small moment in time in a Church that has endured for 2,000 years and shall endure for many thousands more. The Church will not be shaken to the core if the divorced and remarried are admitted to Holy Communion. In February of 2020, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat published his fifth book, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, which argues that America has fallen into a state of intellectual and spiritual exhaustion.Americans are used to worrying that one force or another could doom the American experiment, but, for Douthat, our real enemy is malaise rather than. “Ross is a very gifted pedagogue,” he says, “and willing to engage without acrimony with all comers, as you can tell from his columns and his Twitter feed.” Goldberg, too, calls Douthat a “brilliant culture critic” and says he’s often “extremely penetrating” even when he’s wrong. Ross Gregory Douthat (/ ˈ d aʊ θ ə t /) (born 1979) is an American conservative political analyst, blogger, author and New York Times columnist. He was a senior editor of The Atlantic. He has written on a variety of conservative topics, including the state of Christianity in America and 'sustainable decadence' in contemporary society. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us.

Of all the sour grapes conservatives chewed this past weekend over the same-sex marriage ruling, perhaps Ross Douthat’s was the sourest. While other conservatives moved on to incoherent babbling about “religious liberty”, Douthat used his New York Times column to dig his heels into the argument soundly rejected by Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges: that same-sex marriage is somehow an assault on traditional marriage.

Kennedy argued that the case for same-sex marriage “strengthened, not weakened” the institution of marriage by affirming that it upholds “the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.” Douthat, however, remains skeptical, complaining that “approval of divorce, premarital sex, and out-of-wedlock childbearing” is on the rise and that younger Americans, in particular, take “a more relaxed perspective, in which wedlock is malleable and optional, one way among many to love, live, rear kids—or not.” This sense that marriage is optional offends Douthat greatly, as he sees it as an immoral shunning of duty.

This argument, that same-sex marriage somehow undermines “traditional” marriage, never really made sense to many Americans, for good reason. Since conservatives would rarely define what they meant by “traditional”—saying that it’s about a man and a woman and declining to elaborate beyond that—it ended up sounding like they were saying that if gay people were allowed to marry, then straight people would all get divorced or something. This makes conservatives sound like idiots and ended up backfiring on them, helping many fence-sitters to figure if that’s the best they’ve got, then they must have nothing.

In reality, however, there was a subterranean argument that actually is logical and makes perfect sense. It was never just about man-woman marriages. The tradition that is disappearing is the belief that marriage is a duty, especially for women. As Douthat argues, Americans are rejecting “the old rules, its own hopes of joy and happiness to chase.”

Douthat isn’t wrong on the facts, even if he’s wrong on his assessment of them. It’s true that women in modern society no longer feel like they have to be married to be granted entrance into adult society. Single women living by and supporting themselves is no longer considered scandalous. Marriage is, bit by bit, becoming more about a partnership between equals who choose each other for the purpose of love and happiness. Which means it’s becoming less about giving men control over women’s lives.

In this sense, Douthat isn’t wrong that “support for same-sex marriage and the decline of straight marital norms exist in a kind of feedback loop.” To accept same-sex marriage is to accept this modern idea that marriage is about love and partnership, instead of about dutiful procreation and female submission. Traditional gender roles where husbands rule over wives are disintegrating and that process is definitely helped along by these new laws allowing that marriage doesn’t have to be a gendered institution at all.

But it’s telling that even as Douthat decries the new liberation from traditional marriage, he declines to spell out exactly what parts of traditional marriage he would like to keep. The reader has to figure out what he is for by deducing it from what he is against. He sneers at people who believe marriage is optional, suggesting he wishes it were mandatory. He complains about “thinning family trees,” suggesting he wants people to have more children—and, considering his well-known opposition to legal abortion, he sees force as an acceptable method to get his way on this. He begrudges younger generations who see marriage as “malleable,” suggesting his desire is for a more rigid institution. He grieves that modern Americans reject the “lessons of a long human past,” but leaves it to the reader to remember that the human past is one where women were treated as chattel to be passed from father to husband, legally and socially regarded merely as extensions of their husbands instead of people in their own right.

Reading Douthat, you do get a better idea of why conservatives see same-sex marriage as a threat to traditional marriage. It’s not because straight people won’t want to get married if gays are doing it, too. It’s because it redefines marriage as an institution of love instead of oppression.

But it’s also telling that even though Douthat is willing to get closer to the real argument, he still pulls back from stating it bluntly. That’s because he knows and we all know that this isn’t even really a debate anymore. Liberals and feminists have already won this round. The longing for traditional gender roles and female submission has to be communicated covertly, because blunt statements in favor of it are treated, in mainstream America, like fringe right wing craziness.

Douthat mournfully assumes that people feel this way because they are deluded, arguing that we will all pay for our arrogant desire for love and equality over duty with “greater loneliness for the majority, and stagnation overall.” It’s the same old threat feminists have heard a million times before: Submit to men or die lonely cat ladies. But, as the majority of Americans celebrating the Supreme Court decision over the weekend know, that’s a false choice. We’ve heard the arguments before and we still choose love.

Amanda Marcotte is a freelance journalist who writes frequently about
liberal politics, the religious right and reproductive health care.
She’s a prolific Twitter villain who can be followed @amandamarcotte.

Ross Gregory Douthat (/ˈdaʊθət/^[1]) (born 1979) is an American conservative political analyst, blogger, author and New York Times columnist. He was a senior editor of The Atlantic. He has written on a variety of conservative topics, including the state of Christianity in America and 'sustainable decadence' in contemporary society.

Personal life[edit]

Douthat was born on November 28, 1979, in San Francisco, California, and grew up in New Haven, Connecticut.^[2] As an adolescent, Douthat converted to Pentecostalism and then, with the rest of his family,^[3] to Catholicism.^[4]

His mother, Patricia Snow, is a writer.^[5] His great-grandfather was Governor Charles Wilbert Snow of Connecticut.^[6] His father, Charles Douthat, is a partner in a New Haven law firm^[7][8] and poet. In 2007, Douthat married Abigail Tucker, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and a writer for Smithsonian.^[7] He and his family live in New Haven, Connecticut.^[9]

Education[edit]

Douthat attended Hamden Hall, a private high school in Hamden, Connecticut. Douthat graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in 2002, where he was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. While there he contributed to The Harvard Crimson and edited The Harvard Salient.^[10]

Career[edit]

Douthat is a regular columnist for The New York Times.^[11] In April 2009, he became the youngest regular op-ed writer in The New York Times after replacing Bill Kristol as a conservative voice on the Times editorial page.^[12][13]

Before joining The New York Times, he was a senior editor at The Atlantic.^[14] He has published books on the decline of religion in American society, the role of Harvard University in creating an American ruling class and other topics related to religion, politics and society. His book Grand New Party (2008), which he co-wrote with Reihan Salam, was described by journalist David Brooks as the 'best single roadmap of where the Republican Party should and is likely to head.'^[15] Douthat's most recent book is The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success (2020), which has received positive reviews in The New York Times^[16] and National Review.^[17] Douthat frequently appeared on the video debate site Bloggingheads.tv until 2012.

Published works[edit]

• Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class. New York: Hyperion. 2005. ISBN978-1-4013-0112-5.
• Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream. With Salam, Reihan. New York: Doubleday. 2008. ISBN978-0-385-51943-4.
• Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. New York: Free Press. 2012. ISBN978-1-4391-7830-0.2013 pbk reprint
• To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism. New York: Simon and Schuster. 2018. ISBN978-1-5011-4694-7.2019 pbk reprint
• The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2020. ISBN978-1476785240

References[edit]

Douthat Nyt Twitter

1. ^Douthat, Ross. 'Rush Versus Me'. The Atlantic. Archived from the original on March 28, 2020. Retrieved March 28, 2020.
2. ^Lamb, Brian (May 6, 2009). 'Q&A with Ross Douthat'. Q&A. Q & A. (c-spanarchives.org). Archived from the original on April 14, 2013. Retrieved October 20, 2009.
3. ^Sheelah Kolhatkar (March 6, 2005). 'A Pisher's Privilege'. The New York Observer. Archived from the original on April 9, 2015. Retrieved March 30, 2009.
4. ^George Packer (May 26, 2008). 'The Fall of Conservatism'. The New Yorker. Archived from the original on December 19, 2008. Retrieved March 25, 2009.
5. ^Ross Douthat. 'Anne Rice's Christ'. Archived from the original on February 7, 2009. Retrieved February 3, 2009.
6. ^Hoffman, Chris. 'Q&A with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat'. Retrieved May 17, 2020.
7. ^ ^ab'Abigail Tucker, Ross Douthat'. The New York Times. September 30, 2007. Archived from the original on May 7, 2011. Retrieved March 25, 2009.
8. ^'John Carmichael (1740–1806) and his wife Esther Canfield (1748–1816) of Sand ... - Google Books'. 1996.
9. ^'Opinion | Your Questions, Answered - The New York Times'. Archived from the original on January 22, 2019. Retrieved January 21, 2019.
10. ^Shah, Huma N. (March 13, 2009). 'Crimson Alum Replaces Kristol'. The Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved November 11, 2018.
11. ^Patricia Cohen (July 20, 2008). 'Conservative Thinkers Think Again'. The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 16, 2011. Retrieved September 9, 2008.
12. ^Calderone, Michael (March 31, 2009). 'Douthat enters new Times zone'. The Politico. politico.com. Archived from the original on January 4, 2010. Retrieved October 20, 2009.
13. ^Richard Pérez-Peña (March 11, 2009). 'Times Hires New Conservative Columnist'. The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 17, 2013. Retrieved March 25, 2009.
14. ^Ross Douthat (April 17, 2009). 'A Goodbye'. The Atlantic. Archived from the original on April 17, 2009. Retrieved April 18, 2009.
15. ^David Brooks (June 27, 2008). 'The Sam's Club Agenda'. The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 24, 2009. Retrieved September 9, 2008.
16. ^Lilla, Mark (February 25, 2020). 'Ross Douthat Has a Vision of America. It's Grim'. The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 1, 2020. Retrieved December 26, 2020.
17. ^Sibarium, Aaron (March 5, 2020). 'Our Comfortable Decadence'. National Review. Archived from the original on September 22, 2020. Retrieved December 26, 2020.

Ross Douthat Nyt

External links[edit]

Ross Douthat Twitter

• Douthat's columns, The New York Times
• Douthat's former blog, The Atlantic
• Archive of Douthat's columns, The Harvard Crimson
• Video discussions and debates featuring Douthat, Bloggingheads.tv
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• 'They're Young, They're Bright, They Tilt to the Right' A conversation with Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam from n+1