Vulcan's Mercy

Oh Remember Me!

I had many blessings during by boyhood.  For instance, my Grandma Tingley lived a couple of blocks away from home in one direction and my Grandpa and Grandma Myers a few blocks in the other.  So visiting was an ordinary part of life, which meant my grandparents didn't upset their routine when I stopped by.  Little things carried on like what was on the t.v.  The channel certainly didn't get changed because I was there!  So a Saturday afternoon visit with Grandma Tingley was accompanied by the "champagne" music of The Lawrence Welk Show.  Over at Grandpa and Grandma Myers it was Rem Wall strumming his guitar on The Green Valley Jamboree.  I was especially fond of Wall's closing song "Oh Remember Me", a little gem once lost but found again thanks to the internet.  Enjoy.

Common Ground on Abortion a.k.a. The Graveyard

Thomas Peters of The American Papist has had his fill of the "common ground" efforts of pro-choicers to ratchet down the battle with pro-lifers.  Meeting on that common ground requires pro-lifers to compromise fundamental principles, whereas pro-choicers give up nothing but perhaps rhetoric on how swell abortion is.  Of course, even if pro-choicers also had to compromise on their principles, that common ground would still be a graveyard for pro-lifers where the truth surrenders to the lies that sustain political support for abortion-on-demand.  As any Christian should know, denial of the truth is death.  In his commentary about this, Peters does a fine job showing how the abortion argument is nothing but falsehoods, Orwellian vocabulary, and con artistry by tearing apart the noxious polemics of a hideous "common grounder" named Cecily Kellogg.

Missing In Action: The Honor of Senator McCain

Any decent person should be disgusted with the trashing of Gov. Sarah Palin by the media.  Whatever one thinks of her qualifications to be president, there's no basis for the calumny -- and just plain nastiness -- of reporters, pundits, and talking heads like that, most recently, of late-night host David Letterman and Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum.  Palin deserves the support of all civic-minded Americans against this increasingly deranged assault upon her character, especially that of the man who brought her into the national spotlight last summer, Sen. John McCain.

Now McCain is quite a chest-thumping champion of personal honor, at least his own.  But he has been mostly silent when it comes to the defense of his erstwhile running mate, and what excuse does he have for such dishonorable conduct?  Why is he keeping his head low in this battle?  Especially when Palin's attackers are his campaign staffers too cowardly to put their names behind their words to the likes of Purdum?  When his own people are back-shooters, how come McCain cannot muster his honor to call them out to either stand by their statements against Palin or repudiate them?

Well, the truth is that what McCain calls honor is a lot like self-aggrandizement with a healthy dollop of sanctimony.  So if the matter at hand doesn't make him look good in the media or gore some particular ox of his, McCain isn't going to put himself out.  So even if common decency and genuine honor mean defending Palin against the slanders of his minions, the senator from Arizona ain't gonna do that if it doesn't win him the plaudits of the national media, the Beltway insiders, and the other bein pensants of the political muck he likes to wallow in.

[Note:  And just to make clear how unfit I thought Obama was for the White House, I voted for McCain last November believing all this about him at the time.]

Dead Pop Stars and the End of the News

Michael Jackson is dead.  I got it.  I had no problem understanding that fact when announced on the evening news yesterday.  I really didn't need to be told this again and again and again.  I'm not that thick.  I also didn't need Jerry Rivers a.k.a. Geraldo Rivera telling me why that fact should be important to me throughout the night and this morning.  I certainly didn't see the point of the newsreader reporting that Jackson's autopsy will be completed in about an hour and then brightly promising us a panel of alleged experts to speculate on what the result might be.  Let's wait the hour and get the facts if we really must know!

Of course, none of us really do need to know any of that.  Yes, it was news that an internationally renowned -- and notorious -- pop star died unexpectedly.  Maybe the man's fame -- and weird life -- were enough to justify some hour-long retrospective on him within the next few days.  But the minute-by-minute obsession with Jackson's death on the news networks borders on insanity.  It certainly was frivolous.  First of all, there just wasn't that much to report.  He was taken to the hospital and he was dead about a half hour after that.  Second, Jackson wasn't that important.  He was an entertainer.  A successful one.  Very popular, especially overseas.  But even within his own field of tinsel and glitter I'm not aware of the man being any great force.  It's not as though he put music onto any new course.  Jackson was not of much consequence when it came to anything lasting.

No doubt his bizzare lifestyle and notoriety as an alleged child molester made Jackson an object of fascination for those inclined to slop around in that sort of gossip.  Well, that's what tabloids are for, I suppose, not the major news outlets.  That Fox, CNN, etc. saw fit to shove aside the impending cap-and-trade vote, the rebellion in Iran, the socialization of health care, Obama's purge of inspectors general, NoKo saber-rattling, and a dozen other important subjects worthy of intensive reporting and analysis to wallow in the trivia of a man's death who most Americans took only marginal notice of, if any at all, is in keeping with the end of adulthood I wrote about in the previous post.  Only an adolescent frame of mind could think an entertainer's death merited this obsessive coverage by the mainstream news.

If nothing else, it is the end of the news.

Skateboarding Fools and the End of Adulthood

Greg Gutfeld over at Big Hollywood hits the nail on the head.  He's disgusted with the forty-something fool who skateboards through the White House.  Of course, we shouldn't be shocked.  The Baby Boomers have been extending the expiration date on adolescence for nearly a half century now.  What was once a passing storm of self-absorption has curdled into a lifelong narcissism in which the demands of the visceral self must be accommodated.  Their influence has been powerful as following generations have succumbed to their anthem of "Let It All Hang Out", the bohemian virtue of authenticity.  Even so, we have managed to keep this unseemingly abeyance of adulthood out of our high culture, if not our popular culture -- until now.  But then it is fitting that our first Chief Narcissist should let the White House devolve into a playground for overgrown yard apes.

Go West!

After high school I traveled quite a bit courtesy of the United States Air Force.  First I had the opportunity to journey back and forth from my home in Michigan to the West Coast a number of times over a period of a couple years.  Then I went east, and eventually across the Atlantic to England, where I was stationed for three years.  From there, I visited the Continent and my missions took me to even more exotic locations.  After that I spent awhile stationed near Washington D.C. and traveled up and down the East Coast.  Back to civilian life, business and fishing expeditions took me to other nooks and crannies of North America.  And most recently my wife and I spent a pleasant two weeks rambling along the backroads of France.

However, it was my first great journey from home to the wild wild West that made the deepest impression upon me, especially in contrast to my life soon after that in England.  It taught me both the importance of conservation while completely disabusing me of the urgency of environmentalism.   In other words, I learned that the wild spaces of the West and elsewhere would be best preserved by the evolution of our culture instead of the sledgehammer of our politics.  Let me explain.

Obama: No Friend of Liberty?

Obama's craven statements regarding the uprising in Iran have convinced me of the man's utter incompetence.  It's one thing to be a dove in foreign policy.  It's another to not support a people's demand for liberty because you think that would upset the tyrant you want to buddy up with.  How can he possibly think his mealy-mouthed cautions serve this country's interets?  Advancing liberty elsewhere in the world, where possible and practical, is never contrary to American security, commerce, and ideals.  Giving full-throated support to the Iranian people in their protests against the tyranny of the mullahs not only strengthens us in dealing with those tyrants but has the merit of being the right thing to do.  Only a man completely over his head at the White House could fail to grasp this.  The only other explanation is that Obama is no friend of liberty.  As the man clearly has a Marxist worldview, that could be true.  Then again, maybe the Iowa Hawk has Obama figured out on this one.

Wisdom at the Gates of Vienna

Thanks to the Maverick Philosopher, I discovered this piece of political wisdom by the Baron at The Gates of Vienna.  The Baron offers five reasons why we cannot be conciliatory to Muslim jihadists, and he's quite right the history shows us the disaster that will result.  (Actually the third and fourth reason are basically the same, but I quibble.)  I hope you find this as tidy an argument as I have against confusing decency with conciliation and appeasement.

Three Questions

When it comes right down to it, everything we can ask about anything boils down to three questions:  What?  Why?  How?

Perhaps I shouldn't be so stingy with my words.  More fully these questions are:  What exists?  Why does it exist?  How do we live our lives as a consequence?  Philosophy through its various branches addresses each of these questions.  Metaphysics and epistemology answer "what", or more to the point "what is real" and "how do I know that".  Theology* and aesthetics** answer "why does anything exist" and "how does that relate to me".  Ethics and politics answer "how do I live my life well" and "how do we do so together".

Or to be concise again, these philosophical inquiries answer, respectively:  What is true?  What is beautiful?  What is good?

At the end of the day, the answer to these three questions is the same:  The truth.  The theist will understand that the truth is God.  The atheist, the materialist, and the naturalist will all have different understandings, including the self-contradictory belief that there is no truth.  Nevertheless, the three questions remain as does their ultimate unity in driving towards the truth.  My point here is that whatever answers each of us thinks he has to these questions, there appears no way of getting around them if we press our inquiries far enough.  If so, then these questions are not only the right ones, they are the fundamental ones that anyone must ask himself lest he is complacent to hold his beliefs without examination.

Of course, none of us should be so complacent.  Therefore, we should all be philosophers, and that starts with asking the three questions:  What?  Why?  How?

______________________

* The atheist might object to the inclusion of theology.  My response is that denying the existence of God is a matter of theology as much as affirming His existence.

** By aesthetics I mean the study of the harmony between things that arises from their formal and final causes (and conversely the discord when they are corrupted).  Beauty is our recognition of this harmony.

Wright's Trilemma

C.S. Lewis posed a three-fold choice we have regarding Jesus:  Fraud, madman, or the Son of God.  Whether or not author and fellow Catholic John Wright was thinking of this when he posed his trilemma regarding the origin of the universe, I don't know.  But it is compelling:

Cattitude

Our house is overrun by cats.  We have four of them now -- Harry, Emmy, Abby, and Trixie -- and each has been rescued.  Now that doesn't mean any were a bargain.  Emmy cost us about two grand in vet bills after she found Bridget one cold November seven years ago.  What do you do when a wretched starving beast finds your door to scratch at until you answer it?  Meant to be, I suppose.  Now she's a part of the Tingley household, and the grumpiest member of it.  No good deed goes unpunished.  In fact, that must be the Rule of Rescue when it comes to felines.  How quickly a cat's gratitude for plenty of food, clean water, a warm place to sleep, and bit a catnip becomes cattitude -- i.e., that tolerance kitty begrudges you to hang out in her house.

Truth be told, cattitude is one of the reasons why I like cats.  Not a way of life I recommend to human beings, at least those with a care for their mortal souls, but when it comes to animals this pride's not so bad.  Cattitude is that untamed element in the domesticated feline reminding you that kitty is bowed but unbroken.  That is why this witty bit contrasting dogs and cats that has been floating about the web  for the past year (I wish I could identify the author) gives Bridget and me such a belly laugh when we come across it:

Excerpt from the diary of the dog:

8:00 am – Dog food! My favorite thing!
9:30 am – A car ride! My favorite thing!
9:40 am – A walk in the park! My favorite thing!
10:30 am – Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!
12:00 pm – Lunch! My favorite thing!
1:00 pm – Played in the yard! My favorite thing!
3:00 pm – Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!
5:00 pm – Milk Bones! My favorite thing!
7:00 pm – Got to play ball! My favorite thing!
8:00 pm – Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing!
11:00 pm – Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!

Excerpt from the diary of the cat:

Day 983 of my captivity…

My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects.  They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some sort of dry nuggets.  Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength.

The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape.  In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet.

Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet.  I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates what I am capable of.  However, they merely made condescending comments about what a "good little hunter" I am.  Bastards.

There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight.  I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event.  However, I could hear the noises and smell the food.  I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of "allergies".  I must learn what this means and how to use it to my advantage.

Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking.  I must try this again tomorrow -- but at the top of the stairs.

I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches.  The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released -- and seems to be more than willing to return.  He is obviously retarded.

The bird has got to be an informant.  I observe him communicating with the guards regularly.  I am certain that he reports my every move.  My captors have arranged protective custody for him in an elevated cell, so he is safe.  For now…

The Three Powers of the Soul

Professor Peter Kreeft, in an article excerpted from his book The Philosophy of Tolkien, wrote about how the three powers of the soul manifested themselves in pre-Christian cultures:

"J. R. R. Tolkien, like most Catholics, saw pagan myths not as wholly mistaken (as most Protestants do), but as confused precursors of Christianity. Man's soul has three powers, and God left him prophets for all three: Jewish moralists for his will, Greek philosophers for his mind, and pagan mythmakers for his heart and imagination and feelings. Of course, the latter two are not infallible. C. S. Lewis calls pagan myths 'gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility' (Perelandra, p. 201). One of the key steps in Lewis's conversion, as recounted in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, was his reading the chapter in Chesterton's The Everlasting Man that showed him the relationship between Christianity and pagan myths of salvation, death, and resurrection. Christianity was 'myth become fact'."

This merits some thought.  I think I need to read The Everlasting Man again with Kreeft's idea in mind, because I agree with this insight of his:

"Tolkien's Catholic tradition tends to have a high opinion of pagans who know and follow the 'natural law', for it interprets these pagans not apart from Christ, but as imperfectly knowing Him. For Christ is not just a thirty-three-year-old, six-foot-tall Jewish carpenter, but the eternal Logos, the Mind of God, 'the true light that enlightens every man' (Jn 1:9). So Christ can be present even when not adequately known in paganism."

After all, Christ offered salvation to all of us without regard to where each of us is stuck in place or time.

Future Idiocy

Listening last night to the poseur-conservative Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor ignorantly rant about nefarious Big Oil exploiting the greedy machinations of oil traders to jack up gasoline prices -- something that happens with the approach of every summer -- I thought I would re-post my comments on such rank populist stupidity from a year ago when gas prices busted through four bucks a gallon before collapsing ...

Listening last night to the poseur-conservative Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor ignorantly rant about nefarious Big Oil exploiting the greedy machinations of oil traders to jack up gasoline prices -- something that happens with the approach of every summer -- I thought I would re-post my comments on such rank populist stupidity from a year ago when gas prices busted through four bucks a gallon before collapsing ...

Remembering Reagan

Five years ago Ronald Reagan died.  A good occasion to remember the man, especially these days when conservatives are frequently scolded for clinging to those antiquated principles that the Gipper governed by.

Of course, we are talking about the politics of only a quarter-century ago as though the lessons learned then are now suddenly irrelevant in the Age of Obama.  Human nature isn't so mutable that what was fundamentally true about taxes, sex, and war a couple decades back is any different today.  But then our culture has continued its decay, embracing the vulgarity and ignorance that have allowed unspoken leftist assumptions about man and his society to go uncritically challenge by most of us.  So the bohemain idea that people are plastic and amenable to radical change creates that upside-down world in which Obama, an old-fashioned man of the left peddling decrepit and discredited Marxist policies and programs, heralds the brave new world, while Reagan, a man who grasped the eternal verities of the human condition and brought about genuine liberation for hundreds of millions of people, is consigned to the dustbin of history.

Well, perhaps only the fools and the liars say that.  Neither of which is Mark Steyn.  Here is a reprise of his "Dutch Courage" that marked the passing of Ronald Reagan.

The Joys of Joblessness

Fear not joblessness, middle-aged coporate careerists!  Iowa Hawk on the Generation-Y joys of "funemployment", the "starve-cation", and the nearly uneatened burrito.

Murderers and the Mainstream Media

Author and film critic James Bowman wrote about the discrepancy in news coverage of the Dr. Tiller and Pvt. Long murders by politically motivated killers the other day.  A made a good point that not just liberal bias is at work but also conservative commonsense about crime:

"Yet the reason for this asymmetry is not just media bias, as you might think, though that must be at least a contributory factor in the case of the major media outlets. Apart from the FNC and the MRC, there are many blogs and cable TV shows and radio talk shows on the right which might have been expected to make a big deal out of tying the wacko Mr Muhammad to the left as the wacko Mr Roeder has been tied to the right but they pretty much didn’t. I think I know why. It’s because pro-lifers tend to be conservatives and conservatives don’t intellectualize crime as do liberals — who, as you may have noticed, also tend to be pro-choice."

This doesn't give a pass to the mendacity in the mainstream media.  (That corruption not being that a lefty point of view is apparent in news reporting, but rather the false pretense that it is not there.)  However, there is more going on that conservatives who tend to bleat about bias should note.  Many in the media are not capable of understanding the error in their thinking.  They are stuck in a mindset that renders them oblivious to the obvious, as Bowman illustrates with a sharp example:

"Faced with an act of violence, that is, the liberal of today characteristically looks around for someone to blame besides the person who committed it. In one remarkable case, which I noticed at the time in my website diary and later in my book, Media Madness, a columnist for the Washington Post even asked rhetorically how it could be that, if the Bush administration escaped the blame for the events of 9/11, 'no one' was at fault for it. Blaming the terrorist for his own act of terrorism no more occurred to Richard Cohen than blaming someone else for it would have occurred to most conservatives."

Let us pity the obtuse of print and the airwaves.

The 36-Year Political Cycle

With Obama's election, no one will disagree that there has been a sea-change in American politics.  But that turn left didn't occur on a dime.  It began with the 2004 elections.  At the time, as I read the post mortems of the 2004 election, I got the sense that it represented a fundamental shift, even though the raw vote totals for Bush and Kerry didn't appear to indicate such.  I thought there might be something to this, so I did a little noodling on the subject.  It appears to me that the history of American electoral politics is marked by a 36-year cycle.  At the end of each cycle is a major shift in the coalitions making up the major parties.  The 2004 election marked the completion of the latest cycle.  Let's take a look at this history.

With Obama's election, no one will disagree that there has been a sea-change in American politics.  But that turn left didn't occur on a dime.  It began with the 2004 elections.  At the time, as I read the post mortems of the 2004 election, I got the sense that it represented a fundamental shift, even though the raw vote totals for Bush and Kerry didn't appear to indicate such.  I thought there might be something to this, so I did a little noodling on the subject.  It appears to me that the history of American electoral politics is marked by a 36-year cycle.  At the end of each cycle is a major shift in the coalitions making up the major parties.  The 2004 election marked the completion of the latest cycle.  Let's take a look at this history.

History Repeats or What the Victorians, Fascists, and New Dealers Have in Common

History matters.  It does repeat itself, though not in a fatalistic cycle.  Each of us is a master of his own destiny.  But there is a spirit of the times that over the course of decades yields to a new spirit, which in turn yields to yet another spirit, and so on until this cycling of zeitgeists repeats itself.  This spirit is a widely shared attitude towards the political, religious, and cultural institutions that embody the core values of a society as expressed through changing fashion, style, customs, and manners in all aspects of human endeavor, especially among the elites.  Over time the form of the spirit acquires substance as it is institutionalized by reformation of the organs of society, thus sparking a new spirit among people.

Hugs and Kisses to the Mullahs

Obama's speech in Cairo on Thursday wasn't just dismal, it was disgusting in many regards.  His moral equivalency between the Israelis and the Palestinians generally, and the Holocaust and Palestinian refugees in particular, demonstrates a mindset lost to the Left, and so to reality -- and common decency.  Therefore, I suppose his comparison of Eisenhower's Operation Ajax to keep Soviet influence out of Iran in 1953 to the murderous mullahs' international campaign of terror over the past three decades shouldn't have been a surprise.  But throwing in the towel on Iran's A-bomb program was unexpected and dangerous.  (To say nothing of the silliness of Obama ascribing the conflict over that effort as a disagreement about international nuke regs.)  In short, our president's fawning and weakness in Cairo has emboldened our enemies (the mullahs and the jihadists), confused our fairweather friends (the relatively sane, though still noxious, Arab dictatorships), and alienated our one staunch ally in the region (Israel).  Obama may have blown kisses to the mullahs in Iran, but that love will be unrequited.  Meanwhile, his speech went a long way toward making it more likely that Israel will attack Iran to destroy its nuclear weapons program.

A Good Case Against Sotomayor

Stuart Taylor offers a good argument for conversatives to make against Sonia Sotomayor's appointment to the Supreme Court in an article for the National Journal.  (Hat tip to Real Clear Politics.)  Better than calling her a racist for her race "pride", Taylor suggests an examination of her jurisprudence that would make affirmative action (i.e., government-sanctioned racial discrimination in favor of blacks and Hispanics) the law of the land permanently.  His argument centers upon her support of the decision against the New Haven white firefighters who passed a difficult examination for promotion but were denied it because no blacks passed.  Here is how he wraps up his point against Sotomayor:

Torre [attorney for the white firefighters] went on to emphasize why the test was a valid basis for making promotions -- and what can happen when promotions go to people who have not done their homework:

"These men [are not] garbage collectors. This is a command position of a first-responder agency. The books you see piled on my desk are fire-science books. These men face life-threatening circumstances every time they go out.... They are tested for their knowledge of fire, behavior, combustion principles, building collapse, truss roofs, building construction, confined-space rescue, dirty-bomb response, anthrax, metallurgy.... The court [should] not treat these men in this profession as if it were unskilled labor. We don't do this to lawyers or doctors or nurses or captains or even real estate brokers. But somehow, they treat firefighters as if it doesn't require any knowledge to do the job....

"Firefighters die every week in this country.... A young father and firefighter, Eddie Ramos, died after a truss roof collapsed in a warehouse fire because the person who commanded the scene decided to send men into an unoccupied house... with a truss roof known to collapse early in [a] fire because of the nature of the pins that hold the trusses together.... And the fire chief had to go tell a 6-year-old that her father wasn't coming home."

Judge Sotomayor responded by observing that there must be "a fair test that could be devised that measures knowledge in a more substantive way."

Translation: New Haven needs a test that won't give such an advantage to the firefighters who have learned the most about fighting fires.

Exactly right.  Of all the folly of the leftist jurisprudence that Sotomayor subscribes to, perhaps the worst is her willingness to twist the law against commonsense.

The Sun Is Hot!

I may be a global warming denier, but I'm no solar luminosity denier!  Science fiction writer John C. Wright volunteers to save civilization against that menace to life called the Sun before it destroys us all five billion years from now.  Read him now before they feed you and all the other tragically unhip non-Metaluna-bound squares into the Soylent Green machine.

The Cannibal and the Abortionist

I think philosopher and author Ed Feser gets it right in his commentary on the murder of abortionist George Tiller.  A morally decent person rightly condemns his murder and desires a just punishment of his murderer.  However, Tiller's unjust demise does not mitigate the terrible evil he did.  He murdered 60,000 human beings since the early 1970's.  The injustice done to him pales in comparison.  In making this case, Feser makes an interesting comparison of Tiller to Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious serial killer who was also murdered.  He argues that the abortionist was more evil than the cannibal.  One of his points in this regard is especially keen:

"... Dahmer was apparently fully aware that what he did was evil, while Tiller pretended, to himself and others, that what he did was not evil. Some might think that such self-deception lessens Tiller's moral corruption, but in fact it exacerbates it. A man who knows that what he does is evil but does it anyway is corrupt; a man who has become so desensitized to the evil he does that he can no longer even perceive it as evil is even more corrupt. The sins of the former are likely to be sins of weakness; the sins of the latter, to be willful sins of malice. (Older moralists understood this. The modern cult of 'authenticity' and 'sincerity' has blinded us to it – and is itself a mark of our own grave moral corruption.)"  [Emphasis mine.]

What Feser terms the "cult of authenticity" -- and I have labeled the Left's perverse "virtue of authenticity" -- is indeed a deep corruption responsible for much of the degeneracy in our society.  This alleged authenticity is little better than a surrender of our moral being to our visceral self, in which our will is ordered not to a God-given purpose but to the gratification of pride and appetite.  What other than a monstrous lust for power -- i.e., pride -- allows a man to destroy the divine gift of life on a mass scale?  What other than an appetite for comfort allows us to remain oblivious to his crimes?

Sixty Thousand Slaughtered

According to the New York Times and Fox News, abortionist George Tiller killed sixty thousand unborn children over three and half decades.  As wretched a deed as murdering a man in church is, surely slaying a child in the safest place nature has made for it, its mother's womb, is a greater horror.

Gay Marriage and Liberal Thugs

James Bowman takes The New Republic to task in this article on his website for its vicious sentimentality in promoting gay marriage by either demonizing opponents as bigots or ridiculing them as idiots.  He is especially perturbed by three of the magazine's writers -- Isaac Chotiner, Christopher Orr, and Jonathan Chait -- who were incapable of making a reasoned argument against Sam Schulman's recent article "The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage" in the Weekly Standard.  Instead, ad hominem and vilification were the order of the day.  But then that is typical of liberalism's current degeneracy.  Coopted by the bohemians, liberal politics is now little better than fascistic thuggery against the bourgeois remnants of society.

Bowman had a couple of key points that must be understood about both the folly of gay marriage and the difficulty in opposing it.  As to the former:

"The fury also suggests that Mr Schulman is right when, at the beginning of his article, he deplores the extent to which 'any and all opposition to gay marriage is explained either by biblical literalism or anti-homosexual bigotry.' What he wants to tell us is that at least some of the opposition — his — is based on the belief that gay marriage won’t 'work.' This is because marriage is not just the culmination of a romance, as the gay marriage advocates imagine it to be, but a vital component of an immensely complex system of kinship which is still today, as it has always been, the foundation of our whole social structure. Because gay marriage takes place outside that kinship system, it simply can’t function within it and will die out of its own accord. Anyone less optimistic than Sam Schulman might say that, before it does that, it will wreak further havoc on social structures already weakened by sexual license and easily obtained divorce."  [Emphasis mine.]

As to the latter:

"I find his argument persuasive but can imagine a counter-argument based on already existing alterations to our concept of kinship and on social changes which permanently altered our understanding of what it is to be married long before homosexuals decided they wanted to get on board. Indeed, there would have been no reason for them to want to get on board in the absence of such changes, which give every appearance of being irreversible."  [Emphasis mine.]

Bowman's nails it.  We have been making a wreck of the institution of marriage, both legally and culturally, decades before the absurdity of gay marriage gained any traction.  And he is also right that homosexuals are interested only in this debased form of marriage rather than the thick, foundational social entanglement it was before the primacy of romance over family, the idealization of self-actualization over mutual sacrifice, and the escape of no-fault divorce over the hard work of matrimony.  To the extent that this debasement of marriage functions as a counter-argument, it does silence many opposed to gay marriage.  What these facts about the sorry state of marriage should do is remind us of the need to rebuild the institution in both the law and the culture as the elemental familial bond without which no decent society endures -- not to accelerate its ruin.