Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Mass. school committee votes to hand out condoms to elementary school students
A school committee in Provincetown, MA has voted to hand out condoms to elementary school students. Maybe someday, one of these school committees will vote to hand out an education.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Even the foxes are chickens now: Hal Rogers still vying for Appropriation post
The fox is still scheduled to take over the hen house, arguing that he has truly sworn off chickens.
Earmark King Hal Rogers seems to be looking like the favorite to take over the House Appropriations Committee now that anti-Earmark Republicans have taken control of Congress. Rogers claims to have gotten religion on federal earmarks after years of bringing home millions in federal money to the fifth district of Kentucky.
According to Politico, Rogers is "promising reform and to keep in place the earmark moratorium." In a word, no more chickens for this fox.
The fox's conversion to a poultry-free diet came immediately following the election of a chicken majority. In fact, Rogers conversion to the Earmark cause came as soon as he realized that the Republicans were headed for the majority and his seniority put him in line to head the very committee that doles out the federal dough.
In fact, he beat the ever crafty McConnell in joining the anti-earmark cause. We're all chickens now.
Politico is saying that the infighting to get the House's most lucrative post is getting ugly. Seems that despite all the pledges to swear off chickens, there is something in the Congressional coop that they all want.
But it's not chickens. Honest.
HT: Bluegrass Bulletin
Earmark King Hal Rogers seems to be looking like the favorite to take over the House Appropriations Committee now that anti-Earmark Republicans have taken control of Congress. Rogers claims to have gotten religion on federal earmarks after years of bringing home millions in federal money to the fifth district of Kentucky.
According to Politico, Rogers is "promising reform and to keep in place the earmark moratorium." In a word, no more chickens for this fox.
The fox's conversion to a poultry-free diet came immediately following the election of a chicken majority. In fact, Rogers conversion to the Earmark cause came as soon as he realized that the Republicans were headed for the majority and his seniority put him in line to head the very committee that doles out the federal dough.
In fact, he beat the ever crafty McConnell in joining the anti-earmark cause. We're all chickens now.
Politico is saying that the infighting to get the House's most lucrative post is getting ugly. Seems that despite all the pledges to swear off chickens, there is something in the Congressional coop that they all want.
But it's not chickens. Honest.
HT: Bluegrass Bulletin
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Sam Harris on Morality: More pronouncements from the Englishmen.
I have said before that there is a hierarchy of positions on the issue of how (and whether) moral beliefs can be justified. On the top of the scale is classical religious thought, a scheme of belief in which morality makes complete sense. On the next level down is existentialism, which rightly concludes that if you reject God, then you must also reject morality. And since they reject God, they realize they must reject morality too. It is a mistaken position, but it's at least intellectually consistent.
On the bottom of this hierarchy is the New Atheism, which simply plays pretend and clings, despite no rational justification of its position, that, despite there being no God, there is still morality. The existentialists, being philosophically sophisticated, basically laugh at this position. Nietzsche calls the people who hold it "Englishmen" because he saw the Victorian culture of 19th century Britain doing exactly this.
And how ironic is that? That the New Atheists are essentially recapitulating the Victorian view on morality?
This latter position has now been taken up by people like Sam Harris, the author of Letter to a Christian Nation. I have not read Harris' new book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, and I hope to review it soon. However, his comments describing his argument in the book don't look terribly promising.
Harris first tries to recast the concept of morality in what he calls "flourishing,"and flourishing, he says, "depends on the way the universe is." Therefore (apparently), morality depends on the way the universe is. He argues that because questions of right and wrong are about human and animal well-being, and that human and animal well being depend on certain things in the world that we can study scientifically, that therefore morality can be studied scientifically.
There are two fallacies that people like Harris commit over and over when they discuss morality, as if committing them enough times somehow made them go away. The first is that think they can cross back and forth over the "is/ought" divide as if it didn't exist, and they never explain how they get from an is to an ought. As David Hume pointed out in the 18th century, you simply can't do it. To conclude anything about what should be on the basis of what is is to commit what other philosophers have since called a "category mistake." It's like saying that 2 + 2 = 4 is purple, or that my appreciation of a song I heard today is three feet tall.
This, by the way, is not a problem for classical morality (i.e., Aristotelian Thomism), since classical morality presupposes formal and final causes. If you believe that things (such as human beings) have a definitive nature and purpose, and that acting in accordance with that nature is what is good, and acting in defiance of that nature is bad, then everything makes sense. But the New Atheists, adopting the modern view deriving from the Englightenment that there are no formal or final causes, have left themselves at the mercy of what has been called "Hume's Guillotine."
The second fallacy Harris and his fellow New Atheists repeatedly commit is the Naturalistic Fallacy, which consists of asserting that you can explain ethics by simply describing the conditions that accompany the quality of goodness. If, for example, pleasure always accompanies virtuous acts, then virtue and pleasure must be the same thing. G. E. Moore articulated the problem with this fallacy in his Principia Ethica in the early 20th century.
It is important to note that Hume and Moore are not Christians or even traditional thinkers: Hume was a British empircist Philosopher (and religious skeptic) and Moore was a modern analytic philosopher.
The more fundamental problem, however, is that the New Atheists are mostly philosophically ignorant and don't even seem to be familiar with the fact that these are problems in the first place. I have yet to hear one of them actually address the is/ought problem or explain how their position on morality avoids the Naturalistic Fallacy. You would think they had never heard of Hume or Moore.
I'm sure Harris is more specific in his book, but it will be interesting to find out whether he tackles these problems head on--or whether he simply ignores them as he has done in all the public statements from him I've seen so far.
On the bottom of this hierarchy is the New Atheism, which simply plays pretend and clings, despite no rational justification of its position, that, despite there being no God, there is still morality. The existentialists, being philosophically sophisticated, basically laugh at this position. Nietzsche calls the people who hold it "Englishmen" because he saw the Victorian culture of 19th century Britain doing exactly this.
And how ironic is that? That the New Atheists are essentially recapitulating the Victorian view on morality?
This latter position has now been taken up by people like Sam Harris, the author of Letter to a Christian Nation. I have not read Harris' new book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, and I hope to review it soon. However, his comments describing his argument in the book don't look terribly promising.
Harris first tries to recast the concept of morality in what he calls "flourishing,"and flourishing, he says, "depends on the way the universe is." Therefore (apparently), morality depends on the way the universe is. He argues that because questions of right and wrong are about human and animal well-being, and that human and animal well being depend on certain things in the world that we can study scientifically, that therefore morality can be studied scientifically.
In my book I argue that we can view all possible experience on a kind of landscape, where peaks correspond to the heights of well-being and the valleys correspond to the lowest depths of suffering. The first thing to notice is that there may be many equivalent peaks on this landscape - there may be many different ways for people to thrive. But there will be many more ways not to thrive.In fact, what he seems to be doing is simply redefining morality, which cannot be scientifically studied, by repackaging it in something called "flourishing," which he defines in such a way that it can be scientifically studied. He then concludes that morality can be scientifically studied. It's sort of a shell game where the pea somehow gets removed from the shell it was originally under.
There are two fallacies that people like Harris commit over and over when they discuss morality, as if committing them enough times somehow made them go away. The first is that think they can cross back and forth over the "is/ought" divide as if it didn't exist, and they never explain how they get from an is to an ought. As David Hume pointed out in the 18th century, you simply can't do it. To conclude anything about what should be on the basis of what is is to commit what other philosophers have since called a "category mistake." It's like saying that 2 + 2 = 4 is purple, or that my appreciation of a song I heard today is three feet tall.
This, by the way, is not a problem for classical morality (i.e., Aristotelian Thomism), since classical morality presupposes formal and final causes. If you believe that things (such as human beings) have a definitive nature and purpose, and that acting in accordance with that nature is what is good, and acting in defiance of that nature is bad, then everything makes sense. But the New Atheists, adopting the modern view deriving from the Englightenment that there are no formal or final causes, have left themselves at the mercy of what has been called "Hume's Guillotine."
The second fallacy Harris and his fellow New Atheists repeatedly commit is the Naturalistic Fallacy, which consists of asserting that you can explain ethics by simply describing the conditions that accompany the quality of goodness. If, for example, pleasure always accompanies virtuous acts, then virtue and pleasure must be the same thing. G. E. Moore articulated the problem with this fallacy in his Principia Ethica in the early 20th century.
It is important to note that Hume and Moore are not Christians or even traditional thinkers: Hume was a British empircist Philosopher (and religious skeptic) and Moore was a modern analytic philosopher.
The more fundamental problem, however, is that the New Atheists are mostly philosophically ignorant and don't even seem to be familiar with the fact that these are problems in the first place. I have yet to hear one of them actually address the is/ought problem or explain how their position on morality avoids the Naturalistic Fallacy. You would think they had never heard of Hume or Moore.
I'm sure Harris is more specific in his book, but it will be interesting to find out whether he tackles these problems head on--or whether he simply ignores them as he has done in all the public statements from him I've seen so far.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Rand Paul vs. Eliot Spitzer
Rand Paul vs. Eliot Spitzer on CNN. My favorite part is when Spitzer, who is tries to play gotcha journalist throughout the whole episode, asks Paul about his salary when he was a doctor. Paul asks Spitzer how he would feel about Paul going into has past. Ouch!
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Justice Scalia Is No Sir Thomas More
The St. Thomas More Society of Maryland awarded Supreme Court Justice with its "Man for All Seasons Award", which is "given to members of the legal profession who embody the ideals of St. Thomas More." I can think of few members of the legal profession whose legal philosophy is more opposed to the principles for which More stood.
St. Thomas More resigned when it became clear that his position as Chancellor under King Henry would require him to affirm the jurisdictional authority of the state without the limitation of the Church's own authority. Justice Scalia, on the other hand, said in an interview with the Catholic Reporter, "I don’t think there’s any such thing as a Catholic judge.... If I genuinely thought the Constitution guaranteed a woman’s right to abortion, I would be on the other way. It would do nothing with my religion. It has to do with my being a lawyer."
When faced with his own career aspirations, St. Thomas More refused to relegate his faith to the private sphere of his life, rejecting the idea that he could be anything but a Catholic chancellor. Justice Scalia, on the other hand, separates his faith from his role as a judge to the point that he would be willing to perpetuate what his faith regards as a manifest injustice (a moral issue that makes King Henry's divorce look small by comparison). Whether or not Justice Scalia's view is correct, he certainly is no Thomas More.
St. Thomas More resigned when it became clear that his position as Chancellor under King Henry would require him to affirm the jurisdictional authority of the state without the limitation of the Church's own authority. Justice Scalia, on the other hand, said in an interview with the Catholic Reporter, "I don’t think there’s any such thing as a Catholic judge.... If I genuinely thought the Constitution guaranteed a woman’s right to abortion, I would be on the other way. It would do nothing with my religion. It has to do with my being a lawyer."
When faced with his own career aspirations, St. Thomas More refused to relegate his faith to the private sphere of his life, rejecting the idea that he could be anything but a Catholic chancellor. Justice Scalia, on the other hand, separates his faith from his role as a judge to the point that he would be willing to perpetuate what his faith regards as a manifest injustice (a moral issue that makes King Henry's divorce look small by comparison). Whether or not Justice Scalia's view is correct, he certainly is no Thomas More.
Your child left behind: The sorry state of education in the U. S.
Here is the Atlantic magazine, in a new article, "Your Child Left Behind," on the sorry state of education in the United States:
Stanford economist Eric Hanushek and two colleagues recently conducted an experiment to answer just such questions, ranking American states and foreign countries side by side. Like our recruiter, they looked specifically at the best and brightest in each place—the kids most likely to get good jobs in the future—using scores on standardized math tests as a proxy for educational achievement.
We’ve known for some time how this story ends nationwide: only 6 percent of U.S. students perform at the advanced-proficiency level in math, a share that lags behind kids in some 30 other countries, from the United Kingdom to Taiwan. But what happens when we break down the results? Do any individual U.S. states wind up near the top?
Incredibly, no. Even if we treat each state as its own country, not a single one makes it into the top dozen contenders on the list. The best performer is Massachusetts, ringing in at No. 17. Minnesota also makes it into the upper-middle tier, followed by Vermont, New Jersey, and Washington. And down it goes from there, all the way to Mississippi, whose students—by this measure at least—might as well be attending school in Thailand or Serbia.
Read more here.
Facebook readers can access the full Vital Remnants blog here.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Lexington didn't elect a gay mayor; it elected a mayor
I was quoted in the Lexington Herald-Leader Sunday on the fact that Jim Gray, the newly elected major of Lexington, Kentucky, is gay. The quotations were entirely fair, but one thing that didn't make it in from the interview was, "Lexington didn't elect a gay mayor; they elected a mayor." Gay issues played absolutely no role in the election. People voted on economic issues. Period.
As I mentioned in the article, if Gray had invoked gay issues in the campaign it could very well have been a different outcome. I told the reporter that, in regard to gay issues, you can conclude exactly nothing from the mayoral election, since the issue never came up.
You can read the article here.
As I mentioned in the article, if Gray had invoked gay issues in the campaign it could very well have been a different outcome. I told the reporter that, in regard to gay issues, you can conclude exactly nothing from the mayoral election, since the issue never came up.
You can read the article here.
Sunday, November 07, 2010
People who want to teach kids the "facts" about sex get the facts wrong on new study
It is time for all of us to avert our eyes once again from the fact that gay rights groups and their friends in the media are misrepresenting scientific evidence. Oh, wait. Did I say that? Maybe I should not have said "they're lying to us" in such a negative way. I'm trying to think of other ways I could say "they're lying to us" that would sound a little better.
But I'll tell you what. While I'm trying find a way of saying "they're lying to us" that sounds better than simply saying "they're lying to us," take a look at the headlines of these stories available on the Internet about a recent study released by the journal Pediatrics:
Now there is a teeny tiny problem with these headlines that makes them slightly deceptive. The problem, in short, with saying that one in ten teens are having sex with same sex "partners" is that one in ten teens are NOT having sex with same-sex "partners."
A slight problem, you'll have to admit.
You see, according to the abstract for the study cited by these stories, "Of sexually active adolescents, 9.3% reported a same-sex partner, a higher estimate than other published rates." Read it again: 9.3% "of sexually active adolescents," not of all teens.
Oops.
Not only that, but the study's results were based on teens in New York City who filled out public health surveys. Surely, you're thinking, we have some reason for believing that teens in New York City who fill out public health surveys are somehow representative of teens nationally. I mean, shouldn't we expect a study of teens living in, say, rural Utah would yield similar results?
In fact, the reports that the new results are higher than in other studies appear to be referring to studies with different population groups--a 2001 Minnesota student survey (9.4%), a 2008 British Columbia survey (8%).
Furthermore, about a third of these teens reporting "bisexual" experience reported having sex forced on them. Did they have sex with a same-sex partner willingly?
But, again, we should be willing to live with these problems and inconsistencies since we don't want to question the Approved Opinions on these issues that now dictate the evidence instead of vice-versa. It would also ruin some of the inferences some people are drawing from these results.
The study's abstract discusses the rate of "risky sexual behaviors" engaged in by these teens, and one of their findings is that the teens who also have sex with others of the same sex are more likely to engage in "risky sexual behavior." We don't, of course, ever want to assume that engaging in sex with same-sex partners is itself risky behavior. According to Elizabeth Saewyc, a "researcher at the University of British Columbia," teens "may engage in riskier behavior because sex education programs don't always acknowledge gay, lesbian, and bisexual relationships."
Now just try for a moment and get past these scientific inhibitions you might have about things like scholarly integrity and actual scientific causation and try to see if you can just sort of get in the politically correct zone on this issue and think this through.
These teens having sex with other teens of the same sex are more wreckless than than the ones that don't. Now I know there are some naive traditionalist rubes out there thinking that maybe these findings (higher rates of risky sex and higher rates of forced sex with people who decide not to cross the gender boundary when they do have sex--not to mention all the gay teens now apparently killing themselves) indicate that sex with others of the same sex is not a good idea.
They're thinking that if some other, less politically correct behavior was found to be more dangerous to engage in, the so-called experts would be out in force lecturing us all about how we should cease and desist from the behavior in question. When smoking, for example, is found to have bad health consequences, we deploy an army of health experts all of whom tell us that we should stop doing it. They don't tell us that we should be more tolerant of smokers or how we should portray smoking more positively in health programs or that we should teach students how to smoke more safely. They just tell us to stop.
So why, they will ask, are we doing this with teens having sex with other teens of the same sex?
If you are asked this question simply cover your ears and start talking about tolerance and diversity. Just say it and keep repeating it, over and over and over again.
Oh, and did we mention that these are the same people who want to teach our kids the "facts" about sex?
Facebook readers can access Vital Remnants here.
HT: Cranach
But I'll tell you what. While I'm trying find a way of saying "they're lying to us" that sounds better than simply saying "they're lying to us," take a look at the headlines of these stories available on the Internet about a recent study released by the journal Pediatrics:
One in ten teens has same-sex partners: Study (Reuters)These are just the articles on the first two pages of a Google search. There are many, many more.
One in ten teens has same sex partners: Study (Yahoo News)
1 in 10 teens has same-sex partners (Mother Nature Network)
1 in 10 teens has same-sex partners (Asiaone)
One in ten teens has same-sex partners: Study (Leader Post)
One in 10 NYC teens has had same-sex partner: study (CTV News)
1 in 10 NYC teens has had same-sex partner: study (UPI)
One in ten teens have same-sex partners: report - Need to know (Macleans)
Study shows one in 10 teens has same-sex partners (Calgary Herald)
Nearly 1 in 10 N.Y. Teens Have Same-Sex Partners (The Advocate)
1 in 10 Teenagers Have Had a Same Sex Partner (Greenwala)
Now there is a teeny tiny problem with these headlines that makes them slightly deceptive. The problem, in short, with saying that one in ten teens are having sex with same sex "partners" is that one in ten teens are NOT having sex with same-sex "partners."
A slight problem, you'll have to admit.
You see, according to the abstract for the study cited by these stories, "Of sexually active adolescents, 9.3% reported a same-sex partner, a higher estimate than other published rates." Read it again: 9.3% "of sexually active adolescents," not of all teens.
Oops.
Not only that, but the study's results were based on teens in New York City who filled out public health surveys. Surely, you're thinking, we have some reason for believing that teens in New York City who fill out public health surveys are somehow representative of teens nationally. I mean, shouldn't we expect a study of teens living in, say, rural Utah would yield similar results?
In fact, the reports that the new results are higher than in other studies appear to be referring to studies with different population groups--a 2001 Minnesota student survey (9.4%), a 2008 British Columbia survey (8%).
Furthermore, about a third of these teens reporting "bisexual" experience reported having sex forced on them. Did they have sex with a same-sex partner willingly?
But, again, we should be willing to live with these problems and inconsistencies since we don't want to question the Approved Opinions on these issues that now dictate the evidence instead of vice-versa. It would also ruin some of the inferences some people are drawing from these results.
The study's abstract discusses the rate of "risky sexual behaviors" engaged in by these teens, and one of their findings is that the teens who also have sex with others of the same sex are more likely to engage in "risky sexual behavior." We don't, of course, ever want to assume that engaging in sex with same-sex partners is itself risky behavior. According to Elizabeth Saewyc, a "researcher at the University of British Columbia," teens "may engage in riskier behavior because sex education programs don't always acknowledge gay, lesbian, and bisexual relationships."
Now just try for a moment and get past these scientific inhibitions you might have about things like scholarly integrity and actual scientific causation and try to see if you can just sort of get in the politically correct zone on this issue and think this through.
These teens having sex with other teens of the same sex are more wreckless than than the ones that don't. Now I know there are some naive traditionalist rubes out there thinking that maybe these findings (higher rates of risky sex and higher rates of forced sex with people who decide not to cross the gender boundary when they do have sex--not to mention all the gay teens now apparently killing themselves) indicate that sex with others of the same sex is not a good idea.
They're thinking that if some other, less politically correct behavior was found to be more dangerous to engage in, the so-called experts would be out in force lecturing us all about how we should cease and desist from the behavior in question. When smoking, for example, is found to have bad health consequences, we deploy an army of health experts all of whom tell us that we should stop doing it. They don't tell us that we should be more tolerant of smokers or how we should portray smoking more positively in health programs or that we should teach students how to smoke more safely. They just tell us to stop.
So why, they will ask, are we doing this with teens having sex with other teens of the same sex?
If you are asked this question simply cover your ears and start talking about tolerance and diversity. Just say it and keep repeating it, over and over and over again.
Oh, and did we mention that these are the same people who want to teach our kids the "facts" about sex?
Facebook readers can access Vital Remnants here.
HT: Cranach
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Ten animals Ed Brayton would like to ignore
The only thing sillier than some of Christine O'Donnell's statements during her campaign for U. S. Senate in Delaware is some of the responses to her.
Ed Brayton, for example, seems to think it a highly damning critique to lampoon O'Donnell's remarks on certain sexual practices by pointing to the animal kingdom, where those same sexual practices occur, as if the reader is supposed to conclude that this is somehow morally instructive for humans.
I have dealt with this whole line of argument before in "Gay Penguins and the Inductive Argument from Hell": that if we can find animals that do something, we must therefore conclude it's okay for humans. Start down that road and it's interesting what you end up committing yourself to.
Here are ten animals we do not want to emulate:
I would also mention the female giant green anaconda, which mates with multiple males at one time, but you never can be sure what interesting inference from their own reasoning these people may already accepted. So why bother. These are people who are pretty far gone, morally speaking, so its getting harder and harder to find something that's outrageous according to their morality (and I use that term loosely)
By the way, why is it always some debased behavior we're supposed to mimic in nature? When was the last time you heard these people pigeons who mate for life, or dogs for their loyalty or bees for their industriousness and arguing that we should emulate them. Why is vice, rather than virtue, the only thing we can learn from nature?
Ed Brayton, for example, seems to think it a highly damning critique to lampoon O'Donnell's remarks on certain sexual practices by pointing to the animal kingdom, where those same sexual practices occur, as if the reader is supposed to conclude that this is somehow morally instructive for humans.
I have dealt with this whole line of argument before in "Gay Penguins and the Inductive Argument from Hell": that if we can find animals that do something, we must therefore conclude it's okay for humans. Start down that road and it's interesting what you end up committing yourself to.
Here are ten animals we do not want to emulate:
- Komodo dragons, polar bears, crocodiles, etc. (eat their young)
- Fishing spiders (eat potential mates)
- Bachelor biting midge, female redback spider (eats opposite sex after mating)
- Spotted hyena, seabirds (murders siblings)
- Ichneumon wasp (tortures others insects)
- Hippopotamus (attracts mate by urinating & defecating)
I would also mention the female giant green anaconda, which mates with multiple males at one time, but you never can be sure what interesting inference from their own reasoning these people may already accepted. So why bother. These are people who are pretty far gone, morally speaking, so its getting harder and harder to find something that's outrageous according to their morality (and I use that term loosely)
By the way, why is it always some debased behavior we're supposed to mimic in nature? When was the last time you heard these people pigeons who mate for life, or dogs for their loyalty or bees for their industriousness and arguing that we should emulate them. Why is vice, rather than virtue, the only thing we can learn from nature?
How to tell whether the Republicans are serious about fiscal restraint
If you think that majority control by Republicans automatically means that we have entered the era of federal belt-tightening, then you'd better sit down for a moment. We've got some bad news for you.The job of taking care of the nation's financial hen house is about to be given to ... the fox.
Very few people noticed this during the election, but, with the Democrats out of power in the U. S. House of Representatives, the congressman slated to take the helm of the House Appropriations Committee is none other than Kentucky's own Hal Rogers. Rogers, who represents the 5th district and is a longtime Republican member of the committee, has used his post to direct a pipeline of federal cash back to his district.
Rogers is the congressional poster boy for federal earmarks. He is to fiscal restraint what Godzilla was to Tokyo. Can we mix more metaphors in description of the complete and utter absurdity of putting Hal Rogers at the head of the House Appropriations Committee at a time of Tea Party ascendancy? Yes we can: putting Hal Rogers in charge of stopping earmarks is like putting Madonna in charge of abstinence education.
Let this be the first test of whether Congressional Republicans are serious about their campaign promises.
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Evolving conservatism
Anthony Esolen on the election:
I fear that the battle, not always but all too often, is between a radical materialism and a softer materialism, a radical worship of Progress (to where, is never specified) and a softer worship of Progress. For instance, I saw the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, on television with Geraldine Ferraro, the two of them commenting upon the difficulties of being a woman in national politics. One of them said, "There are still some Neanderthals out there who believe that it is impossible for a woman to have a family and raise her children properly while embarking on a political career. We hope that they will soon evolve beyond that position." Those italics are mine. Note the assumptions here. People in previous generations were bigots. What they actually believed about the relations between men and women, and their roles in private and public life, can be dismissed with a sneer. We, who divorce half of the time, when we bother to marry in the first place, we whose cities are sinkholes of sexual and familial chaos, we can safely ignore the so-called wisdom of past ages. We have evolved, don't you see. Just as, I suppose, our understanding of freedom has evolved beyond that of that fellow Jefferson -- that ascetic and patrician landowner, to use William F. Buckley's words, whom we can call upon to justify denuding the public square of all expressions of religion, but otherwise dismiss.Read the rest here.
The person who made that comment, of course, was Governor Palin. I guess I shouldn't single women out for the collapse of our political thinking -- that we are not producing even an eloquent and somewhat addled populist like Bryan, or a stubborn constitutionalist such as Cleveland; and those fellows are rather dwarfed by the political intellects of the Adamses, or Jefferson and Madison, or Webster and Calhoun. Yet I wonder sometimes what a Palin or a Pelosi can be thinking. Are they entirely unaware of the great (and sometimes failed) statesmen of the American and British past? Are they not embarrassed by the vulgar cackling of the commentators on that show that is inevitably on the screen when I go to the doctor's or the dentist's, The View? Cackling which makes Rush Limbaugh appear like Demosthenes. Or are they aware in the slightest of the collapse of the American family, which in certain sectors of our population is evident in the disappearance of responsible men, the should-be fathers of their communities?
...Ah well. The fiscal conservatives have no idea that they lack a proper understanding of the human being and of the common good, and that they therefore play the secularist's game on the secularist's own turf. The social conservatives have either bought the idea that "government," for good or bad, means management by bureaucrats from afar, or have bought so much of the sexual revolution that their residual opposition to killing children remains utterly unmoored from any consistent vision of what a good human life or a virtuous and just human community looks like.
Monday, November 01, 2010
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