476: Why can't we marry our cousins?

The boys drink and review a light dopplebock from Schlaffly then discuss the cultural relevance of cousin marriage. The England parliament has recently started debating whether to prohibit cousin marriage, which P&C thought was already against the law. Apparently not -- not in England, and not in all the states. The increase in Muslims in England has made this a big issue. In Pakistan, up to 60 percent of marriages are to first cousins. In England, while British Pakistanis accounted for 3.4 percent of all births, they had 30 percent of all children with recessive disorders. It's become a public health issue, but it's also a "sensitive issue." The larger issue with cousin marriages is the difference between clan-based societies -- where affiliations are based on family relations -- and western societies -- where affiliations are based on other factors. Banning cousin marriages in the west created high-trust societies that were not based on family relationships. By contrast, many dysfunctional countries are dysfunctional precisely because they only trust people in their families. Having said all that, there's been a lot of cousin (and even sibling) marriage among the political elite. What's up with that? The boys discuss the implications of these connections and how they affect societal customs.