An immodest proposal: polygamy for powerful

  The prophet and his companions were authorized by Allah to take wives from women prisoners captured in battle. Even among Christians there was unofficial polygamy. Charlemagne (Karl der Gross) had six wives, more or less successively with concubines filling in between. The various French Kings Louis had "favorites" besides their wives, something they assumed was their right. Currently, French newspapers, lacking a royal family, would be bereft of gossip material if M. Le President Sarkosi did not have at least one unofficial partner. King Edward VII in England had his Sarah Bernhardt and Lilly Langtree, and a long list of less-presentable mistresses.

  Even the current prime minister of Ireland had a public companion for many years. As an Irish woman said of the prime minister, "sure, doesn't poor Bertie need someone to take care of him?" His relationship did not seem to disturb the notoriously conservative Irish. Indeed the hierarchy, practiced in condemnations, ignored it.

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  The assumption seems to have been that powerful leaders have the right to such amusements. The evolutionary process has apparently created men with strong impulses to impregnate many women, a fact that does not justify or excuse adultery but helps one to understand it. In the history of our species, those with power and wealth have an easier time getting sex.

  To take my tongue out of my cheek, however, a man who permits himself to become, as canon law would say, a public and notorious adulterer in this uptight American society is likely to end up in very deep trouble. It is hard, as Gov. Eliot Spitzer and President Bill Clinton before him discovered, to cover up your exercise of your presumed right to sexual variety. There is a very good chance you will get caught and that you and your wife and children will be exposed to public humiliation. This may seem unfair because even in Ireland the leader escapes public humiliation for his concubinage. But that is the way it is in this country that is hypocritical in its praise for sexual freedom and puritanical in its judgment of public persons. Once you become a public person, you are in a free-fire zone for government snoopers and roving entrepreneurs. The media will hardly be able to contain their salivating enthusiasm as they destroy you and your family.

As someone who watches modern marriage from the outside, however, it seems to me that men have a hard time coping with one woman at the most. But what do I know?