Apparently, Aztec alcohol policy was a bit schizophrenic:
Aztecs liked fermented sap, but had a legal drinking age (52) higher than their average life expectancy—although every four years they’d hold a New Year’s festival called “Drunkenness of Children,” at which all citizens, including toddlers, were required to drink.
From this entertaining review of “Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol.”
Ross and Reihan expected the most incisive criticism of “Grand New Party” to come from libertarians. Kerry Howley has obliged:
Privileging one, dominant idea of the family comes with costs that R&R never really grapple with in their breezy book, and those costs fall almost exclusively on one gender. Through the tax code, R&R wish to change the relative prices of women’s options, rendering childlessness more costly and early motherhood less so. They want the federal government to stake a position on the proper role of women, and that role involves a heterosexual marriage with children. While conceding that this is politically infeasible at the moment, R&R write that “we should be willing to stigmatize illegitimacy by tying a tax relief to responsible parenting.” (Responsible parenting=parenting by legally married couples.) This is a policy that punishes poor women unable to find marriageable men, gay and lesbian partners unable to access legal marriage, and any other number of people who are responding rationally to their environment, doing the best they know how for the kids they have.
And as long as I’m on liberal equality and gender, check out this humorous and thought-provoking book review by Sandra Tsing Loh.
In Brief Shared Items Of Note