Why do some nations’ birthrates fall? And can Big Government boost them?

[Germany] spends some €200 billion ($270 billion) on promoting children and families per year…But its birth rate, at 1.39 births per woman aged 15 to 49, remains among the lowest in Europe…

…The web of benefits is so complex that even experts don’t fully grasp it: There’s a “child supplement,” “parental benefit,” an “allowance for single parents,” a “married person’s supplement,” a “sibling bonus,” “orphan money” and “child education supplement,” not to forget the “child education supplementary supplement.”

The article suggests that the reason that German women don’t have kids is because the government isn’t funding enough daycare and preschools to make it easy for them.

I have a different theory. My guess is that birthrates fall:

1. because living standards rise. (Kids stop being a help on the farm; start being expensive.)
2. and because the Welfare State gives people the illusion that government will take care of them in old age.

My second point would mean that Big Government measures won’t, over time and on average, raise a nation’s birthrates. The more the State does – the more it hands out benefits and asserts its dominance in citizens’ lives – the less urgent its citizens will feel about procreating. Agree/disagree?

Like many of those who are more supportive than critical of the National Rifle Association, I have struggled mightily this weekend not to respond to friend’s Facebook posts holding the organization responsible for Friday’s shooting in Connecticut.

Horrified, as we all are, by what happened, they want to pin the blame on someone and choose an outfit of which they have long been critical.  Perhaps, it makes them feel better.  Or perhaps, it helps them make sense of actions which transcend the understanding of rational, civilized people.

As the ancient Greeks so well understood, we will never fully understand the irrational.

What makes this one so particularly painful was the murder of twenty children, none older than 7.  And that they were killed in a season where most of us celebrate with our families.  Twenty-seven families will have less to celebrate this year, feeling the loss of a child, a girlfriend, a wife, a sister, an aunt or a mother.

It is those murdered individuals and the families we should be thinking about right now.  As a nation, we are united in grief.  Yes, there is political rhetoric to criticize and media behavior to condemn, but in criticizing it, we lose sight of what really matters.

Some people get it.  I have seen numerous Facebook posts from friends on both sides of the political aisle and those about whose political leanings I know nothing who have offered touching tributes to the fallen as well as gentle reminders to cherish our family and friends. (more…)

I want to apologize for not blogging for the past two days. I have just returned from a trip to the Bay Area to meet my new nephew. And shortly after his bris, it was time to attend Yom Kippur services.

Yesterday, while still in the Bay Area, I checked the blog only briefly, had thought to write, but decided to spent more time with my Mom, my sister and her boys.

Back in LA now, and hope to get back to regular blogging soon.

This past weekend, as a favor to my sister and brother-in-law, I drove up to the Bay Area so they could have an adult in the house with their three-year-old son while they shared a romantic evening at a nearby hotel.  Of course, this favor was a duty most pleasant as I had the chance to hike with my sister and spend countless hours playing trucks, running races, imitating pirates and dancing the dragatusi (sometimes known as the dragon-tusi) with my nephew.

When his parents were away, that precocious young man had a nightmare, waking in tears.  I rushed to comfort him, but he wanted his Daddy, asking me repeatedly where his father was.  I assured him that Daddy was coming back the following day.

None of Andrew Breitbart’s relatives will be able to provide a similar assurance to his children.  Today, we in the conservative movement mourn a man John Hinderaker called “irreplaceable“.  But, our loss pales in comparison to his children’s.  And his wife’s.  One hopes, one prays, that she has the strength to comfort them in this trying time.  And that she has relatives who can support her in the difficult task of raising children who have lost their father.

“He was kinetic,” wrote Michelle Malkin, “brash, relentless, full of fight, the bane of the Left, and a mentor to the next generation of right-wing activists and citizen journalists.”  And a father to four children.

Other bloggers have talked about his contributions to the conservative movement, how in the words of one, he “lived large“, following “his own path” and doing what he thought to be right — “no matter whom it offended or how it affected his own personal bottom line.”  Another called him “a friend and mentor“, with his family losing “a caring husband, a wonderful father and their center of gravity.”

Indeed, as yet another put it, he was not just “a brave warrior” and a “great guy”, but also a “committed family man.”  And his family will feel his loss even more deeply than we do.

May he rest in peace and may the Holy One provide comfort to his family.

Perhaps I should not have offered that “personal note” I had offered yesterday.  With Bruce busy and me manning the fort, sometimes it seems I can’t meet the expectations of our readers for regular content on a variety of issues, particularly those of concern to our community.  Especially when I have other projects to complete and when there are others issues are on my mind.

When I posted the piece, I expected some understanding commentary — from our defenders and our critics, instead witnessed the return of a troll, arriving not to address the point of the post, but to attack me personally and gay conservatives in general, basing his bile not on anything I had said, but on aspects of my biography he assumed to be true, but none of which having in fact any basis in reality.

Indeed, some were in direct opposition to the facts of my life, some he might have discerned had he read my posts.  For the record, I have a very strong relationship with my father whom I see several times a year even though we live in different states.  He knows I’m gay and loves me for the man I am.

Our relationship has strengthened since I came out to him, perhaps because my coming out caused him to ask questions about an experience that was foreign to him — or perhaps because fathers and sons oftentimes become closer in adulthood.  (And that is all I will say — all, for the purposes of this blog, that needs be said.)

Why someone would want to make assumptions about my relationship to my family is beyond me.  This blog should be a forum for discussion, not insinuation.

I am grateful to ur reader Rattlesnake for not mincing words when he took our critic to task: (more…)

I apologize for not blogging as much as I normally do, even as much as I would like, but am now on a vacation with my family in Florida and when the choice comes down to reading/writing about politics and spending time with my siblings or nibblings, well, I prefer the latter.  You could kind of say it’s not really a choice.

Anyway, in between conversations about the merits of dump trucks with my youngest nephew, his Dad, the younger of my two brothers-in-law, and I have been debating economic policy with my sister’s husband defending the “macroeconomic” policies of the incumbent Administration.  He recently shared with me this article from the Economist arguing that expansionist (i.e., big government policies) spared us a second Great Depression. I have read the article twice and, not having all the data at my fingertips, have only partially been able to refute it.

So, my bleg.  Have any of you seen any articles/blog posts taking issue with said article (linked above).  Also, I recall reading a recent blog post (with data similar to this one) showing how unemployment didn’t begin its steep upward ascent until after the Smoot-Hawley tariff and Hoover’s expansionist policies (that is, unemployment had remained relatively low for about a year after the market crash of 1929 which supposedly caused the Great Depression).  Do any of you have a link to that post?

If you have any such information, please leave it in the comments or e-mail me.

And if I were to buy my brother-in-law a book that best summarizes libertarian economics, including an explanation for how market forces could have spared us the ravages of the New Deal, please let me know.  I was thinking of getting him Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson.  Is there a better book out there?

He has been very civil in his discourse, eager to listen and ever ready to respond with arguments not innuendo.  So, I want to encourage his interest — and hope to change his mind, hence wishing to provide information laid out by someone with a far greater understanding of economics than I.

Sometimes, we bloggers find that our schedules do not allow us the time to write about breaking news of interest to our readers in a timely manner.  When the news breaks, we may have other plans and lack a paid staff or readily available understudies to fill in when we are away.

In the wake of the New York legislature’s vote to recognize same-sex marriages, I would have liked to have blogged more on the topic and have scribbled countless notes for a number of blog posts.  But, I had planned a trip, first to Santa Barbara for a friend’s going away party and thence to the Bay Area to spend time with some family members.  In the coming days, I will try to bring some order to my notes and write those posts, but for now, I write from the kitchen in my sister’s new house in the San Francisco ‘burbs, having just concluded a lengthy conversation with that spirited mother of a most energetic two-and-one-half year old.

For the past three days, I would have rather spent my time, dining with my mother (whose visit to SF was the occasion for my trip), hiking with my sister or playing with my nephew than organizing my notes and writing (hopefully) thoughtful posts on gay marriage.

Those three paragraphs were supposed to have served as the introduction to the first post I had wanted to write on gay marriage.  Perhaps, I should leave them as a reflection on blogging, but I do want to add one more thing.

Part of the “play” with my nephew involved a trip to Traintown, a railway-themed mini-amusement park featuring “a quarter scale railroad on 4 miles of track.”  On our twenty-minute ride, although I focused on my nephew, I did notice a (presumably) lesbian couple and their child.  One mother who had the short hair and very matter-of-fact manner of many lesbians I know and showed the same solicitude toward her daughter that my sister regularly shows her son, gently, at one time, offering her a sippy cup when the child seemed thirsty and not letting it fall when she rejected it soon thereafter, thrusting it at her Mommy (without regard to her willingness or ability to hold onto it). (more…)

Last week (on the advice of a legendary Hollywood producer of kids’ television), I watched the latest (and, despite reports, not last) Disney princess movie, Tangled. It was wonderfully Disney, very sweet, very touching and often very funny (e.g., the scene in the “Snuggly Duckling”).

Perhaps, I enjoyed it more because I imagined how my soon-to-be three-year-old niece would love it, recalling how her face lit up when each of the Disney princesses came up to our table at Ariel’s Grotto in Disney’s California Adventure this past July.  I wondered that she, like her sister and each of her cousins once did, is going through this princess phase, getting all goofy over such Disney movies and dressing up in regal regalia.

It’s not just my nieces.  On Saturday, Glenn Reynolds, linking an insightful piece by Virginia Postrel wrote that his “4-year-old niece is getting a princess costume for Christmas, because that’s what she’s into these days.”  “Why,” Postrel asks, “in a society without princesses, does this archetype remain so intensely glamorous to girls with all sorts of backgrounds and personalities?”  Great question.  I’m not quite sure the answer, but I will note that it has been fun watching my nieces go through the princess phase while their brothers and male cousins invariably pass through the superhero phase.

I am just now returning from the second gathering of my immediate family, immediate to me at least, my siblings and their offspring (as well as at least one of our parents) in seven weeks.  In May, we gathered in New York for my third eldest niece’s Bat Mitzvah.   This past weekend, we celebrated my Mom’s 75th birthday in San Diego.

What distinguished these two weekends from past such gatherings was the near absence of political (for lack of better word) confrontations.  In our family, the partisan divide falls neatly along gender lines, with the men Republicans, the women Democrats (but the sisters-in-law tend to vote Republican while the brothers-in-law lean left, but not dogmatically so).

(The absence of political disagreements made these weekends more enjoyable, far more enjoyable, than the typical family get-together.)

Anyway, it reminded me how well we can all get along if we refrain from discussing politics.  I love my Mom and both my sisters and share much in common with all three.  My Mom and I both love art and had a wonderful day on Saturday with my third eldest nephew (her grandson) at the San Diego Museum of Art where we saw an amazing exhibit, Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece. (I could see it again, even found material for the current chapter of my dissertation in the depictions on the various vases.)

My more liberal (and politically active) sister shares my passion; she is a first-rate mother.  And then there’s my San Francisco sister to whom I’ve become particularly close since I joined her in the Golden State.  She has become a good listener (and a good friend), sympathetic to my “plight” as a single man.  And her first-born is helping her learn the maternal skills her elder sister enjoys.

I say all this because I wonder if some of our critics, who often show the same passion for politics as does the elder (of my) sister(s), also have some of the qualities my liberal siblings possess, that they too are good brothers, sisters, devoted children or loving parents or like yours truly a doting uncle (or aunt).  I try sometimes to see through their harsh commentary to imagine the person beneath and hope sometimes that through posts like this one they can see the humanity behind my on-line political persona. (more…)

A very good lesbian friend of mine alerted me to an article proving that my affection for my nieces and nephews is natural:

A new study found that homosexual men may be predisposed to nurture their nieces and nephews as a way of helping to ensure their own genes get passed down to the next generation.

Weird that she should send this on the day before I set to spend a day with an “adoptive” niece at Disneyland.  Will make the day more enjoyable knowing that I’m only doing what comes naturally.  (Memo to self:  stop at ATM to get extra cash to make sure ice cream fund is fully replenished.)

Evolutionary psychologist Paul Vasey of the University of Lethbridge in Canada studied “group of men called fa’afafine on the Pacific island of Samoa.”  The fa’afafine are exclusively attracted to men:

The researchers surveyed about 300 fa’afafine, and found that they were significantly more likely to be altruistic toward their nieces and nephews than either single men or women, or mothers or fathers. The scientists call this behavior avuncular, or uncle-like.

Yeah, that sounds right.

And I just thought I was a nice guy.  Turns out it’s just my inherent avuncular abilities.

This is going to make Disneyland a whole lot more fun today, knowing my altruism is instinctual.

Back when I was a lad, every summer our family loaded up the Chevy Suburban (or Ford Van which replaced it) and headed West or Northeast for a camping trip.  One year, we visited Wyoming, Montana and Alberta.  After hiking i Yellowstone National Park, our parents planned to take us to Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness, but one of my younger brothers took ill. They changed the plans, we headed to Great Falls to seek medical attention.

A visit to a doctor and a few days rest at a local Holiday Inn and soon my brother was back to normal.

The lesson of this anecdote should be familiar to anyone who has found himself in a position of responsibility.  When the circumstances change, you need to change your plans.  My parents recognized that with my brother’s illness, we could not continue the trip as planned.

So too should Obama recognize that with increasing evidence of a growing terror threat and continuing uncertainty about the economy, he has to turn his attention from regulatory schemes like health care and cap and trade and focus on jobs and national security.

Sometimes, I wonder if the president pushed through such a massive “stimulus” at the outset of his Administration, assuming that releasing so much cash would be certain to create jobs.  The economy would pick up, allowing Democrats to focus on their pet big-government projects.

But, things didn’t work out as planned.

That’s why this Democrat needs to learn from FDR.  Had it not been for the wars in Europe and the Far East, had that Democrat bid for a third term in 1940, he likely would have lost the presidential contest that fall, to be known to history as an inspiring failure.  But, as the threat to Western Civilization grew, he pivoted to meet the emerging challenges.  Magazine covers notwithstanding, the latest Democrat to occupy the White House shows few signs of following in his illustrious predecessor’s footsteps.

The “stimulus” hasn’t worked.  He needs develop new and different programs to increase employment.

His national security team offered a ham-handed response to the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253.  He needs shake up that team and devote greater attention to the terrorist threat.   Obama, as Rudy Giuliani contends, may have “turned the corner” in his understanding of that threat, but he needs show that he has made countering it a priority. (more…)

I just returned from last minute holiday shopping, actually, even though I’m Jewish, I can actually call it Christmas shopping as I’ll be spending Christmas Day in San Francisco with my Mom, my sister, her husband and their son (the most important person in the Golden State whose adorable mug has appeared multiple times on this blog).

Given that my brother-in-law celebrates Christmas, word is there’ll be some kind of festivities at their home.  So, today, I made sure to buy presents for all and sundry.  Until this afternoon, I never fully realized how draining gift-buying and present-wrapping can be.  It may well have been that I had no idea what I was getting for anyone, save my brother-in-law, until I set out on my various errands.  The good news is that I was also able to find presents for a niece and nephew whose birthdays are coming up.

I did learn today that one should never go to Target two days before Christmas.  Farmer’s Market was manageable, but the Grove was hectic.  I did find gifts for all, things that relate to family member’s various passions, tastes and preferences, but, given how much I spent, regret that I didn’t find any “home-run” gifts.  I mean, I always try to get something perfect for someone, such that when they open it up, their face will light up, knowing that their uncle, brother or son knew what they loved, having bought something that they really wanted. (more…)

It is perhaps fitting that my youngest nephew celebrates his first birthday today (three days before the actual event) on the 113th anniversary of the birth of his great-great Aunt Ruth and the 190th anniversary of the birth of the greatest English novelist who ever lived, Mary Anne Evans Cross (AKA George Eliot).  For that great woman was particularly fond of children.  Almost all her novels end with the main character romping (or otherwise in the company of) his (or her) progeny.

Eliot understood childhood and the importance of a nurturing relationship between an adult and child.  And she even understood the importance of uncles.  At the close of Adam Bede, while Seth the brother to the novel’s eponymous hero did not marry the woman he loved, did delight in being uncle to her children.  Beckoned by his sister-in-law, Seth

. . . presently appeared stooping under the doorway, being taller than usual by the black head of a sturdy two-year-old nephew, who had caused some delay by demanding to be carried on uncle’s shoulder.

‘Better take him on thy arm, Seth,’ said Dinah, looking fondly at the stout black-eyed fellow.  ’He’s troublesome to thee so.’

‘Nay, nay:  Addy likes a ride on my shoulder.  I can carry him so for a bit.’  A kindness which Addy acknowledged by drumming his heels with promising force against uncle Seth’s chest.  But to walk by Dinah’s side, and be tyrannised over by Dinah and Adam’s children, was uncle Seth’s earthly happiness.

Last year, at this time I watched the BBC version of Silas Marner (featuring Ben Kingsley) where Eliot tells how by adopting an abandoned child, the eponymous hero found meaning and joy in his life and a connection to his his community.

“It’s a lone thing; I’m a lone thing. . . . It’s come to me,” he says when others in the community tried to take the child from him.  Eliot so delighted in the effect of a child on an adult with an open heart:

She [that child] was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep–only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky–before a steady glowing planet, or a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway.

In February when I was in San Francisco, my sister and her husband went for a run, leaving me to watch over my sleeping nephew.  I peered into the darkened room where he was asleep in his cradle and felt a similar awe, an awe I’ve felt in the presence of his many cousins.  Eliot had described something we grownups feel and have felt, perhaps for as long as members of our species could feel.

Such is the power of George Eliot’s prose, the images she invokes, the ideas she presents, the emotions she expresses. She helps us find words for our deepest thoughts and shows compassion for our everyday weaknesses. She seems to see into the troubles of all our lives and finds the balm in tender relations with our fellows.

Since I am borrowing from last year’s post to craft this one, this year I will once again cut and paste the piece I have posted in previous years:

There are holidays we all celebrate. And then there are the personal days, the anniversary of a wedding, the day we first met our beloved, the birthday of a friend, special relative or favorite writer. November 22 is one of those days for me. Not only does it mark the anniversary of the birth of a very dear great Aunt, my Aunt Ruth, who would have been 113 today, it is also the 190th anniversary of birth of the greatest English novelist, George Eliot.

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Yesterday, the Cincinnati Enquirer ran a story on how many citizens of the city where I was born joined with Massachusetts’ Senator Edward Kennedy to help ensure the immigration in 1978 of a girl suffering from a syndrome which Soviet doctors could not treat in her native Moscow:

Jessica [Katz] was born in 1977 in Moscow with malabsorption syndrome, a disease that prevented her from digesting milk or food. Soviet doctors could not cure the condition, and as their infant daughter grew ever weaker, her parents realized her only hope for survival hinged on treatment in the West.

My family played a small part in helping Jessica through her ordeal, visiting her in Moscow in the summer of 1978.  (My Mom is quoted in the article.) The fall after our visit, in large part due to Kennedy’s intervention with Soviet authorities, her family was allowed to leave the Soviet Union where they could build a new life in Boston and she could get treated for her syndrome.

I visited Jessica’s father Boris several times when I was in college.  As most Soviet emigrés, he had strong anti-Communist views and great respect for the then-President of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan.  And though the then-senior Senator from Massachusetts harshly criticized (and actively sought to thwart) the Gipper’s aggressive foreign policy, Boris refused to criticize Kennedy, always recalling how he helped secure his release.

He only had kind words for the late Massachusetts Democrat.

Just a reminder that while we conservatives criticize Kennedy’s many flaws, he did do a great deal of good, a very deal of good, by one family suffering under Soviet Communism. And that should count for something.

As per my last post, I don’t know how much time I’ll have for blogging in the next few days.  As this goes up, I’ll be somewhere in the Beehive State, either driving to the home of a good friend and his family or hanging out with said family.

From then it’s onto Colorado to spend some time with family, relaxing with my Dad in the Rockies, then visiting my brother at his new digs in Denver–and seeing assorted cousins and friends in Mile High City.  Will try to do some vacation blogging . . . .

And with my sister visiting my Dad and my step-brother ensconced in Denver, I’ll get to see at least three nieces and four nephews, only one of whom has met her newest cousin.

Seems I’ve inspired the Youngest PatriotNephewWest to ponder the mysteries of the universe:

Or maybe that’s just what happens when you snuggle up in Daddy’s arms while your favorite uncle sits nearby.

So much did the youngest PatriotNephewWest like the hat his favorite uncle bought him that he tried it on without taking off the price tag:

Then, he and his Mommy took me for a walk through Golden Gate park. And every time I looked at him, he responded with a smile.

And like one of his cousins, he has his own blog.

It’s amazing how much bigger he’s gotten since the last time I saw him (back in February) — when he hadn’t yet learned how to smile.

UPDATE:  As my sister wished me good night, she said that her son’s smile makes “all the sleepless nights worth it.  I’ll just say that the smile more than pays for the cost of the trip and having to wait nearly an hour to make it to the toll booth for the Bay Bridge.  I sure got lucky in the nephew (and niece) department.  (And not just this one–his cousins are all pretty amazing.)

Today is the first Mother’s Day when both my sisters as well as all three of my sisters-in-law are Moms. And it’s weird when I think about each of them as mothers, not because they’re not suited to the role. Quite the contrary; they’re all quite good at it.

What makes it kind of weird is watching my nieces and nephews relate to them, as if these women I knew as girls and (brothers’) girlfriends have never been anything but mothers. I mean, it didn’t occur to me until I was well into my adolescence, maybe even when I was in college, that there was a time when my Mom was new at mothering, yet she was a pretty darn good mother.

To us, she was an expert Mom. That’s how we knew her. And that’s how my nieces and nephews know their Mommies. 

Back in February when I visited my new nephew and watched my baby sister take care of that child, her son, she seemed as natural at it as did our Mom. Maybe it was helping our sister with our nieces and nephews and watching our sisters-in-law take care of their kids. Or maybe it was something else.

Whatever it is, my baby sister who couldn’t stop crying the first time I held her, seems to have a way of quieting her son’s tears, whether it’s by feeding him or just comforting him with soothing words and a maternal touch.

Seeing my nephew in my sister’s arms, I recalled our mother holding her when she was that small. With the birth of her first child many years ago, our mother, like her youngest child this past year, became a mother for the first time. She did a pretty good job; that little baby grew up to be a successful neurosurgeon, happily married now to the same woman for over twenty years, with four amazing sons, including a very talented young blogger.

Given the nurturing his Mommy is providing him, my youngest nephew is certain to do as well as, if not better than, his oldest maternal uncle.

Going through my unread mail from the past week, I followed a reader‘s link to Orin Kerr’s post telling his father’s story, the “only member of his immediate family to survive” the Holocasut

What made the story particularly touching was that his father was born in Suwalki, the town my great-grandfather fled at the end of the Nineteenth Century to find a better life for his wife and young sons, my grandmother’s older brothers.

My great-grandfather, born Fajwel Kronberg, was one of two brothers.  As the second son, he would have been required to serve in the Czarist army for a term of several decades.  As my great Aunt Ruth explained, a son could escape military service  only if he had no brothers, so her father took the name Friedman, posing as the only son of another family.

He and his brother saved up enough money until both could leave the Russian Empire, the older going to Australia and the younger making his way to Cincinnati.  Because of that choice, my grandmother was born to freedom and I would have a number of great uncles and one amazing Great Aunt, the aforementioned Aunt Ruth, whose very life was a gift to those who knew her.

And today, let me thank Orin Kerr for helping remind me just how fortunate I am.  And to my great-grandfather, whom I never knew, for making the choice that he did.

So, as a tribute to those who perished in the Holocaust, read Kerr’s post.  As you learn what he–and so many others lost–you might see how truly fortunate those of us are to have or have had aunts and uncles, great and just good.

After having two successive conversations on sexual ethics, dating and relationships, it seemed fitting that I concluded yesterday watching the Adam Sandler movie Spanglish. I had only a vague notion of the film’s subject matter when I picked it up the DVD on the super bargain rack (under $5) at Target earlier in the week. I had not seen it in its initial release, having heard that it received poor reviews.

Since then, a number of friends commented favorably on the flick, so it seemed worth the minimal purchase price. And while it was flawed, I found it brilliant, one of the few Hollywood films of late to capture a complex moral situation and break the Hollywood romantic formula to offer a socially conservative message about parental responsibility.

Spoiler Alert. If you have not seen the movie and intend to do so, don’t read any further unless you wish to know how it turns out.

Just like Bogart in Casablanca, one of the greatest movies of all times, Sandler, this film’s hero, learns there is something more noble than romantic love.  For Bogart, it was the fight against fascism.  For Sandler, it’s  his duties as a father.

Most of the films flaws are minor. I didn’t particularly like the framing device, a voice over by the daughter of the Sandler’s romantic interest as she reads her application to Princeton University detailing why her mother has been so influential to her. It’s not that I minded the voice over. It’s that it seemed a little overmuch.

And maybe one of the “flaws” was not so much in the movie itself, but in my expectation. Considering that Sandler was the lead, I expected a comedy, but what I got was more of a drama, with some of the comedic elements seeming out of place.

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