Brown person Zack Ajmal is working on a series on marriage in the Muslim world. See here, here and here.
Good complement to the ParaPundit post titled Consanguinity prevents Middle Eastern political development (all related articles here). Add to this a recent Ann Marlowe piece on the importance of the circle-of-cousins in Afghan culture. She indicates quite clearly that it acts on a block to the development of what we in the West would view was a fully-fleshed civil society and government.
Guns, strong familial circles of support and a history of decentralization, yet Afghanistan is not a libertarian paradise. Clearly, liberty as we understand it requires some preconditions. Yes, I’m sure clear to all you sage readers, but if I had told myself that 4 years ago, I would have shot back with a whole flood of inferences from a few axioms rooted in Natural Rights.
Update: Steve Sailer had a good article on this too that was printed in The American Conservative, I don’t recall it ever being linked to on his blog but I just found it online. -JM
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