Polite Kid

Another aspect of this pestilential 'niceness' is the moral agnosticism that usually goes along with it.
This seems to be an increasingly common problem in our society, and I think it is certainly a part of what ails us.
We've really taken to heart the idea that making a moral judgment or even a 'value judgment', in the namby-pamby social scientists' phrase, is to be avoided at all costs. We have to see everything in shades of grey, with ambiguities aplenty.
For example: two people of your acquaintance, both of them presumed 'friends' or at least people you purport to 'admire', are in a dispute. The moral agnostic 'nice' person makes sympathetic noises to both parties, and shrinks from making a judgment about which party is the wronged party, or which has right on his side. It may be that in rare instances, neither side is wrong, and neither is fully right, and it may be that the dispute is a mere misunderstanding or miscommunication which can be clarified by some detached third party stepping in and correcting the wrong signals.
But in my experience, when judging conflicting ideas or individuals, there is a preponderance of right on one side. Of course, a flawed human being will seldom be completely blameless, but the fact of human frailty does not mean that we can never, ever discern who is right, for the most part, and who is wrong, who was the aggressor or instigator and who was the recipient of the aggression.
I tend to think it's moral laziness to refuse to try to discern, or to seek to walk a tightrope, privately uttering sympathetic words to each side separately, while taking a neutral stance publicly. Or is it cowardice? Or a selfish desire to maintain oneself in the good graces of both sides, while feigning support to each party in secret? If so, that's also duplicitous and insincere, which the Bible condemns.
To refuse to take the right side in every case in which it can be discerned is immoral, and yet somehow these days, this is the default position of many people. Might it also be that so many people are deathly afraid of taking an unpopular position, and being isolated or ostracized for it? We certainly see many examples of this attitude.
The Bible also speaks against double-mindedness and having a 'double heart', or 'speaking guile.'
Psa 12:2 They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: [with] flattering lips [and] with a double heart do they speak.
I find that when someone takes the spineless way out and tries to have it both ways, working both sides of the street, I lose all respect for that person.
This is especially so when the wishy-washy person turns a blind eye to someone's aggressive or cruel behavior because they 'like' the person. Usually this is the case when one party is socially popular or influential, and many people, being in awe of social influence or prestige, will give the person a pass on reprehensible or uncharitable or immoral behavior because of who they are, or because of their personal charm or social status. This is what the Bible calls 'respecting persons.' We are not to be 'respecters of persons' or to hold the offender's 'person' in regard.
But we are supposed to be respecters of truth.
Suppose one party gossips, maligns, and slanders another party, and perhaps bullies that person in direct or indirect ways. Do we continue to be friendly with the wrongdoer and the wronged party? Why would we do this? The bully or the slanderer is not a person who should inspire our loyalty or regard, yet many people will refuse to call out the bad behavior or shun the wrongdoer, preferring to turn a blind eye, trying to justify their moral agnosticism by saying 'but he's a nice guy, and he hasn't done anything to me.'
Again, I cannot respect the person who behaves this way, even though they may fancy that their behavior amounts to being an impartial or above-the-fray 'peacemaker' between the two estranged parties. Either we believe that certain actions are right, and others are wrong, or we don't. It appears many people don't want to be so 'controversial' as to believe unequivocally in right and wrong, and to support the right side openly. But we are supposed to take a side, the right side, whenever there is a moral conflict. We are not allowed to sit out the battle.
Many of the people I know are very fluid in their principles, being easily moved one way or the other, based on their feelings and emotions. For instance Christians who claim to oppose things like abortion or homosexuality or illegal immigration will, if they meet with a likeable individual who is an advocate of abortion, or a homosexual, or an illegal immigrant, will not be able to separate their liking for these individuals from their opposition to the actions of these individuals -- so what gets lost? The principles. If they meet a personable and charming gay activist, they will begin to say 'well, we mustn't be narrowminded. Times change.' Many people are swayed by the immigrants they meet and sympathize with, and soon say 'we have to make it easier for these people; the laws for immigration are inhumane.'
Most conservatives and Christians of a traditonal sort deplore the moral relativism or facile moral equivalency at which the liberals are so practiced, but it seems they too are falling prey to the tendency.
And in most cases, we are drawn in that direction by our personal feelings, through being charmed by certain individuals, or perhaps we are flattered at being drawn into the circle of a prominent or influential person, so we overlook or justify the bad behaviors this person practices, whether it's sexual immorality or social cruelty and arrogance.
'But this man does so much good! He gives to charity; he supports a lot of good causes.'
Or: 'he's a brilliant man, very intellectually stimulating, a great thinker, a champion of our side,' -- so they tolerate, or worse, justify his petty unkindness towards his 'lessers', and his belittling of those he sees as rivals, intellectually or socially or politically.
Where are the lovers of justice and truth and goodness? We seem to be, too often, respecters of persons, covetous of the social approval of those we admire or like, regardless of their moral worth.
This can apply on a national scale, with the idolizing of morally reprobate celebrities and amoral politicians, or with those we look up to in other, smaller spheres. We have our favorites and our little idols, and we are happy to turn a blind eye to the harm they do -- simply because we 'like' them. They make us feel good in some way, and we are hooked on 'feeling good.' Or they flatter us, and we feel grateful that they include us in their circles, so we happily cluster around and applaud their every pronouncement, regardless of its worth, in gratitude for their deigning to notice us.
In some cases, some rather sad people identify with some high-achieving or notable person, and vicariously partake in their successes, and that this person may be an amoral, self-seeking egotist or an immoral, deceitful manipulator matters not at all to their admirers.
It all seems to boil down to our loss of fixed principles and morality, with a loss of regard for truth and right and justice. It's all about who we 'like', or how we feel about something, rather than about the question of goodness and worthiness.
I've had more people giving me unsolicited statements about who they are voting for, and so often I am struck by the utter incongruity of their choices. People I would least expect to hear these statements from tell me 'I'm voting for Obama', or 'I'll vote for McCain', while giving no sound reason for doing so. Their choices seem utterly illogical, at least based on what they have said over time, or based on what they purport to believe in. When we cut ourselves loose from our moorings in reason, logic, or established principles of any kind, and behave according to our shifting feelings and moods, there can only be more irrational and morally derelict behavior.
I suppose it makes a twisted kind of sense, if we have outlawed judgements, to base our decisions mostly on personal feelings and whims, and on a sense of loyalty only to persons, not to solid beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong.

Labels: Justice, Moral Agnosticism, Moral Relativism, Societal Decay, Traditional Morality

Did you watch the '100 Days' press conference? Neither did I, though I've looked at the transcript just to see what was said. But the following question and the ambiguous answer given has me puzzled. At one point, #44 says that waterboarding was torture, and that it 'violates our ideals and values' but then he says he is convinced it was the right thing to do. However I don't expect logic or consistency from him or his administration; it looks like he is trying to have it both ways, predictably:
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. You've said in the past that waterboarding in your opinion is torture. And torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?
MR. OBAMA: What I've said -- and I will repeat -- is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don't think that's just my opinion; that's the opinion of many who've examined the topic. And that's why I put an end to these practices.
I am absolutely convinced that it was the right thing to do -- not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways -- in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.
I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British, during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, "we don't torture," when the -- the entire British -- all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And -- and -- and the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what's -- what's best in a people.
It corrodes the character of a country.''
I have not blogged about this waterboarding/torture issue, because it is rather a thorny subject with which I haven't concerned myself very much. On the one hand, I find little sympathy for terror suspects but on the other hand, I cannot and could not bring myself to share the Rush Limbaugh attitude that, say, the incidents at Abu Ghraib were 'no worse than a fraternity hazing', just no big deal. I remember when that scandal first broke I was still somewhat of a mainstream conservative in many respects, but broke ranks with the dittoheads on the subject of the War on Terror or the Iraq War specifically.
So is waterboarding 'torture'? I don't know. I don't have a clear-cut answer. I do see a danger of simply reacting, as most Republicans do, in knee-jerk fashion to the rantings of the left. In other words, if the Democrats are agin' something, we have to be for it, and not only for it, but rabidly so. If they think waterboarding is torture, we have to say it's not only not torture, but in fact a good and virtuous thing. I reject knee-jerk politics or partisanship.
Overall, though, this issue is not high up on my list of priorities. But here is an interesting discussion from What's Wrong With the World, where Lydia writes about the changing views among conservatives on the ethics of 'torture' and capital punishment.
The End of a Consensus
This post is going to be full of sociological claims about which I am uncertain. It's okay if you disagree with me about them, so long as you do so nicely.
First claim: Thirty-five years ago, most conservatives were both very strongly in favor of the death penalty and strongly opposed to torture, where "torture" would have included waterboarding, if they had been asked about it.
Second claim: This is no longer true today. Now, conservatives who are strongly in favor of the death penalty tend to be the same ones who support at least some forms of torture, and conservatives who are opposed to those same forms of torture tend to be, at least, uneasy about the death penalty rather than strongly in favor of it.
Suppose these are both true. What caused the change?'
There is a paradox here. I would say she is right that a generation or so ago, most conservatives were pro-capital punishment yet they would not have approved of torture, or of some of the 'interrogation methods' that are apparently being used in recent years. She asks why views have shifted among conservatives. It does appear that more conservatives now have misgivings about the death penalty, but there is also a much more cavalier attitude about 'torture' in interrogation. I found the approval of torture by many conservatives to be surprising when it first became apparent a few years ago. I wondered at the time why this was so; I always, even when I was liberal, had a picture of conservatives as being more gentlemanly and civilized than many liberals. I suppose the generation of 'conservatives' who were dittoheads or listeners to talk radio generally tended to be less genteel than the old-time conservatives.
This isn't your father's conservatism.
But why has there been a change, as Lydia asks?
Further down, she says:
There is something to my mind bracing and healthy about a person who recognizes, sternly, uncompromisingly, and forcefully, the importance of the death penalty, who takes a manly position also on self-defense, who is nowhere close to pacifism, but who views torture with unmitigated disgust and rejection. Can anyone imagine John Wayne torturing anyone? But I can certainly imagine him solemnly sentencing a murderer to death. And what about the Marine hymn? "First to fight for right and freedom, and to keep our honor clean."
Regardless of what John Wayne would have countenanced, or more accurately, what his movie characters would have done, would, say, Robert E. Lee have approved of torturing anyone? Stonewall Jackson? Thomas Jefferson? George Washington?
Yet all of these men would, as Lydia says of Wayne, would have no objection to the death penalty where appropriate.
We live in a strange and inconsistent age; some of the same people on the right who support the death penalty for certain criminals are too squeamish to send illegal invaders home, or to close our borders, because that would be cruel and inhumane.
As far as the death penalty, this subject has come up here before. I notice something strange about the comments on Lydia's post at WWWtW: almost no one references or cites the Bible on the subject of the death penalty. Someone quotes G.K. Chesterton as an authority; I admire Chesterton as much as the next, and a quote of his adorns my sidebar. But he is not my authority on ethics and morals. Another commenter references C.S. Lewis; I would say the same of him that I say about Chesterton. But shouldn't a Christian look to the Bible to know God's will on that subject? Surely the absence of Biblical references is surprising on a site which espouses a Christian worldview -- or perhaps more accurately a Catholic viewpoint.
I think the question of the Church's teachings on capital punishment is an interesting topic which should be explored, although I won't attempt that here, as I am not a Catholic and I don't feel qualified to explore that. It's a subject for those who are Catholic or who are more knowledgeable about Catholic theology or doctrine than I. I do know, simply, that the Catholic Church used to favor capital punishment for certain crimes like murder, though I don't know how or why that position was reversed.
Even less do I know why Protestants, in some cases, are abandoning Biblical teaching on the death penalty. I was talking about capital punishment with a very conservatively-brought-up Christian recently, when we were discussing various crimes. This person told me that she was not sure about capital punishment because the Bible says ''vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.'' I attempted to point out that this is in reference to personal matters, admonishing us not to take revenge on someone who has wronged us, just as with the 'turn the other cheek' admonition. But I fear it fell on deaf ears. She thinks capital punishment is revenge, and that it is a failure to show mercy and forgiveness. Again, I tried to point out that God is not only merciful but just and holy, not tolerating sin. She was unconvinced. And I know there are many more like her, who are now becoming more liberal and vacillating on issues like punishment in general. Many have been persuaded by years of exposure to the Oprah approach, and the emphasis on mental illness as the cause of crime, not human sin or evil. Punishment, according to that worldview, is backward; an enlightened society 'understands' and 'rehabilitates' its 'sick people'; it does not punish criminals. That is so 'medieval.'
Someone on the WWWtW thread opines that the tendency to favor harsh interrogation methods for terror suspects is driven by the tribal defense instinct; we feel under threat so we are willing to justify harsh measures to protect our own in wartime or other such extraordinary situations. I think that makes sense; perhaps it's why I am not inclined to feel sympathy for terror suspects or actual terrorists. I don't believe that the Islamic threat is a bogeyman created by the neocons or the media. On the other hand, neither do I see Islam as the primary threat, so I don't fit in with the mainstream right on this issue.
As for the capital punishment question, I think it will assume more importance as the ascendant far left tries its best to abolish capital punishment. They have been relentlessly working towards that goal for decades and they are sensing victory, so they will ratchet up their efforts to end it. And what with the liberalizing of many formerly conservative churches and denominations, I fear Christians will lose the will to defend the death penalty, and concede the moral battle to the left, probably feeling good about themselves as they do so. It's all part of the same phenomenon which causes the Christian 'conservatives' to reverse themselves on homosexuality, same-sex ''marriage'' or other such social issues. What's next?
Addendum
Here are some good defenses, from a Biblical point of view, of capital punishment. They do a very thorough job of examining many possible objections or questions from skeptics on the issue:
Stand to Reason: The Bible and Capital Punishment
by Gregory Koukl
The Bible and Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment and the Bible

Labels: Capital Punishment, Conservatism, Creeping Liberalism, Crime, Death Penalty, Justice System, Liberal Christianity, Traditional Morality

It seems to me that one of the sources of greatest division between the person who relies on public opinion or popular trends to determine his morality and the rest of us is that the former group of people believe in the 'evolution' of human beings in terms of morality and standards. What was good enough for our fathers: the eternal verities, the traditions, the old landmarks, none of these things is held in any regard by those we call 'liberals' or leftists or progressives. Their basic assumption is that WE (or at least the liberals of today) are the greatest generation; we have more understanding, are more enlightened, more true, more perceptive, and more 'sensitive' than our forebears, who were little better than the cavemen of popular lore, at least in matters of morality and practical matters. The older generations were sexist, narrow-minded, puritanical, repressed, judgmental, rigid, exclusivist, ''anal'' to use the hideous modern jargon. And it goes without saying, above all, that they were 'racist' and xenophobic and homophobic. And anti-Semitic.
I will offer just this one general piece of advice to those who believe that our generation is the last word on morality and enlightenment. Read old books; go to older sources for a needed balance or a corrective to today's popular morality and ideology.

C.S. Lewis wrote, in the Introduction to Athanasius on the Incarnation:
''Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.
All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook�even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united � united with each other and against earlier and later ages�by a great mass of common assumptions.
We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century � the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" � lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth.
None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill.
The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.''
I would make one small objection to one thing Lewis says. He says there is nothing magic about the past, and that people were 'no cleverer' than they are now. I would say, with a few reservations, that they were 'cleverer' than we are now; they were certainly better-educated and more well-read, more versed in the classics, including the Bible, at least in certain eras. Our generation has been shockingly dumbed down. And no, in some ways they of the past were not any better than we are; as a Christian, Lewis would agree that in every age, people are sinners, we are born fallen.
However the Bible clearly says that some generations are worse than others. Mankind takes one step forward occasionally, but then tends to take two (or three) steps back. We are in one of those eras which has taken several giant steps backward.
The Bible tells me, as does my own power of observation, that people are 'waxing worse and worse' as we move through history.
In any case, each age, as I've said before on this blog, has its particular blind spots, and we need the corrective of the witness of people in other ages, who perhaps saw certain things with more clarity than we.
We need to have a word from past generations in order to understand ourselves and our world. If we get all of our information from our equally confused peers, or from the dishonest media and the opinion-makers, we will be the blind being led by the blind.
Once in a while on this blog I delve into some old book from my shelves, or I find an obscure old book in a used book store that I like to share with you. I think it's essential food for not only our minds but our spirits. Let's not lock ourselves into a house of mirrors where we see nothing but our own reflection; it's better to seek a glimpse of the wider world, of other vistas, of that 'other country' that is the past.

Labels: Education, History, Old Books, Old Days, Traditional Morality

Where are all the social conservatives?
Not here in this discussion.
The discussion is about this story, regarding the young girls in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who apparently made a pact to become pregnant.
It makes me ask: what is going on in Gloucester?
According to City-Data.com, Gloucester is 96.2% White Non-Hispanic, 1.5% Hispanic, 0.6% black.
Allowing for the usual case that these statistics are several years out of date, and also that they represent an undercount of illegal immigrants and others, it seems likely that most of the girls involved are White, of unknown ethnicity.
Here there is a City-Data forum discussion of the story.
So what is going on here? It's not really a surprising story given the trends, going back some years, among Whites in which the illegitimacy rate has been climbing, although not nearly as high as that of blacks or Hispanics.
The fact that the degraded pop culture makes slutty behavior acceptable if not outright glamorous and 'cool' certainly contributes to this kind of thing.
But in the discussion at ParaPundit about the pregnancy pact, it seems that there is little social conservatism on display, except from Randall Parker himself. Granted, many of the regular commenters there are not conservatives; some are liberal or libertarian. But why are there so few socially conservative comments in many such discussions? Are social conservatives a dying breed? It certainly seems that way if you read around the Internet at the 'conservative' or Republican watering holes.
The comments about how girls in past eras married at very young ages are reminiscent of some of the comments made in this discussion on Brave New World Watch a while back. The subject was the FLDS (another subject on which I seemed to be at odds with most conservatives), and the consensus seemed to be that very young marriages could not be opposed on any kind of principle, seeing as how our grandmothers or great-grandmothers married at young ages in many cases. My argument was that the vast majority of young girls (and young men) these days are not ready or willing to truly raise any children they conceive, unlike the older generations, who were mature in a social and emotional sense at much younger ages. However, my argument was dismissed out of hand, as you see.
My grandmothers, both of them, married at young ages. In the case of my paternal grandmother, she was all of 16 years old -- but she lived in very different times, in a different world, you might truly say. In her day, most girls of her age finished school at the end of 8th grade. A relative few academically able young people went to high school, on their way, perhaps, to college. The majority did not. Many rural young girls who left school at 13 or so remained at home until marriage, helping with farm and household chores. In urban areas, some young girls went to work. All these girls who did not go to high school and college were gaining real-life experience and had responsibilities, often involving caring for younger siblings or relatives. Very few young people in that era were granted unlimited freedom and large allowances to play, to take in 'entertainment' or to lollygag with their friends unsupervised. They tended to marry young, without having had a lot of 'experience' in terms of relationships. People often married their first sweethearts, or people they had known since childhood.
By contrast, too many of today's teens have a surfeit of free time, with no adult supervision or interaction, a shocking amount of money provided by their parents, and access to a lot of lurid popular entertainment (rap and hip-hop music, violent and explicit movies and TV shows). The combination is a very unhealthy mix.
Hence, a gaggle of teenage girls making a pact to become pregnant.
Those who argue that these girls are simply responding to their biological urge for motherhood -- which is, by definition, good -- don't address what will happen once the girls actually give birth. In an ideal society, we would probably have a lot more early parenthood -- but in the context of a sound marriage. How likely is that for these girls? Nobody seems to know, or be willing to say, who fathered the children the girls conceived. One of the fathers is said to be a 24-year-old 'homeless' man. Are these candidates for happy families? Are they equipped to raise the children to be decent people?
Girls are biologically capable of motherhood, in many cases, while they are in elementary school. So the argument that they should become mothers because they are physically prepared for it would logically mean that we should have 11-year-olds becoming mothers. Why not, if biological readiness is all that matters?
If we are going to argue for motherhood as early as girls can manage it, we have to acknowledge the studies showing that the younger the mother, the more the risks.
I just don't see where this argument, that early motherhood is desirable because it's biologically possible, comes from, especially where 'conservatives' are concerned.
Women are also biologically capable of bearing children up until menopause. Back in the pre-Pill days, women often had babies in their late 40s and occasionally, in a rare instance, over 50. Is that also desirable because it's physically possible? Most of us would say not.
I can't help asking whether there is not a movement to lower the age of consent that is masquerading as a simple wish to go back to the 'old days' when 13-year-olds could marry.
Our present-day society is much more complicated than the one our grandparents and great-grandparents lived in. We can't wish away all the complications and say that immature, narcissistic, dysfunctional teens should just start having kids because they are anatomically capable of breeding.
So what would the conservative ideal be for these girls? Statistically speaking, they are unlikely to give their children up for adoption by married couples, as would have been done in many cases before the Sexual Revolution. Statistically, it would seem most likely for them to give birth, though remaining unmarried, and to go on as before with their lives: attending school, putting their babies in the school nursery or daycare with all their friends' babies, and just participating in all the usual teen social activities: dating, partying, or whatever. Chances are, the babies' grandmothers may be the de facto mothers of the babies. In the old days, when a girl ''got in trouble'' and the father had absented himself or was otherwise unavailable or unsuitable, occasionally the mother of the girl raised the child as one of her own, and the real parentage was not discussed. But that will not happen here; the girls will ''keep'' the babies while not assuming full responsibility. A bad situation all the way around, ensuring that, at least in some cases, the babies will be dumped in day care while the mother works when she is an 'adult', and most likely there will be multiple 'daddies' or 'uncles' in and out of the household as the mother pursues her dating life despite motherhood.
A recipe for future problems, for the child and society.
Ideally, the mothers-to-be would marry the fathers, who would be responsible young men, and all would live happily ever after. But in a world in which young people are devoted all too often to hedonism and self-seeking lifestyles, and few are ready for adult responsibilities until well into their twenties, or even older, there is little likelihood of that. Odds are that a sizable percentage of the babies will be supported, to some extent, by public funds.
So how do we prevent these things? I am afraid that our society has become so decadent that it's all but impossible to shield your children from the corrupting influences that are out there. I've certainly known many young people from conservative Christian homes, in wholesome communities, who run away, engage in promiscuous behavior, have children without benefit of wedlock, or become drug-addicted.
Many well-meaning parents are too busy to keep tabs on what their children are doing, and have rather shallow relationships with their children. Sometimes this is not their fault, as the demands of earning a living, long commutes to work, and managing personal concerns conflict with parenting. Still, in many cases, some of these factors are under the control of the parents, and they are simply too self-absorbed to put their children and family life first. We do have more control over these thing than many admit.
Still even with the best intentions and the best efforts at good parenting, things go wrong. The pull of the tawdry popular culture is just too strong, and it's too ubiquitous. Unless we live like the Amish, there's no chance of completely avoiding the temptations. I hear that even the Amish sometimes lose children to the 'world.'
In the meantime, though, social conservatives (if there are any still left) should be doing all they can to resist the pull of the depraved culture around us. We are supposed to be preserving, or if that is no longer possible, trying to restore the best of our traditional culture, based on the Christian values of our culture.
Giving in to popular trends, going with the flow, or rationalizing bad behavior from a libertarian standpoint should not be the approach we take.

Labels: Family Unit, Social Conservatism, Societal Decay, Traditional Morality, Western Decline

Here, at OneSTDV, there is a discussion of anti-PC humor and frat-boy 'conservatives'.
The subject was the antics of frat boys at Yale, and the larger subject of South Park 'conservatives' and edgy humor. OneSTDV reflects on why he finds this kind of thing disagreeable.
"Perhaps, it's the desperate attempt at social acceptance that I find sad and the "look at me, I'm so edgy" posturing associated with the content. Again, there's just something shallow and unnecessarily crass about such humor."
A companion piece, in a strange way, is this one, which takes an opposing tack, and lauds crude, ''edgy'' pop culture and disparages those who don't choose to partake of it, mainly Christians.
''Witness a site like Plugged-In Online, a kind of encyclopedic collection of reviews of recent movies, TV shows, and music albums -- all of which are critiqued from an ostensibly Christian perspective. I say "ostensibly" not because I doubt the sincere religious convictions of the site's writers, but because their collective aesthetic notions leave much to be desired. Indeed, their habitual tendency is to equate sanitization with sanctification and G-rated-ness with holiness.''
I've read many of the Christian movie review sites, and if anything, they are quite liberal, finding certain levels of obscene language to be acceptable and a certain amount of illicit sex to be no problem ''in context.''
And I wonder what the writer's definition of ''holiness'' is if 'g-rated' is not to be equated with it. Is there such a thing as X-Rated holiness? Or PG-13 holiness?
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary gives a secular definition of holiness, but to a Christian, holy means simply separated. That was the meaning in the original Biblical languages.
The term "holy" is often understood in its contemporary usage rather than its true meaning in the Scriptures. For this reason, our study must begin by reviewing several dimensions of the definition of holiness.
(1) To be holy is to be distinct, separate, in a class by oneself. As Sproul puts it:
The primary meaning of holy is 'separate.� It comes from an ancient word that meant, 'to cut,� or 'to separate.�
Being holy, to a Christian who understands the word, has nothing to do with being a goody-two-shoes, halo-wearing ''saint''. Holiness means being apart from the world and the world system. I suppose this in itself is offensive to the nonbeliever, but considering how thoroughly most nonbelievers dislike Christians, they should be pleased that the real serious Christians separate themselves.
The world likes violent, dark, crude entertainment, but the Christian keeps those things at arms' length. The writer of the article should take heart, though, from the fact that fewer and fewer Christians seem to aspire to holy living. Right now, the fashion among the postmodern Christians is to adopt the world's fashions and fads, and that includes all the raw, crude popular culture.
Holiness is going out of style among Christians. It's so pre-modern.
I'm reminded once again of C.S. Lewis' observation about how each age warns against the very things which are no threat to the prevailing culture: in a libertine culture, people warn against 'puritanism'; in an age which is irreligious, we hear constant cries about how ''right-wing Christians'' are trying to establish a theocracy in our midst. As our borders are obliterated and our country overrun with aliens, legal and illegal, we hear how much ''xenophobia'' and ''nativism'' there is. In an age in which the Minority is king, we hear about ''racism''. In an age where all manner of perversions are out in the open, we hear about how ''intolerance'' is killing us. We have banished the idea of sin, and make excuses for all kinds of bad behavior, but yet we are warned against being ''too judgmental.''
The blog piece continues:
''Thus, to use a Biblical metaphor, is the wheat commonly thrown out with the chaff. Smutty, exploitative, irresponsible, and immoral junk gets lustily condemned, of course, but so does fare that, while irreverent and "adult," is actually in many ways sympathetic to traditionalism, or at the very least gives the ever-looming Zeitgeist a good, square kick in the crotch. Comedies like Juno and Knocked Up, both of which contain a scandalously pro-life message, are dismissed out of hand due to their nonstop racy and vulgar dialogue. The 40-Year Old Virgin, which, if you pay attention, actually promotes abstinence before marriage, also gets greeted with prissy exhalations of exasperation and contempt for its raucous and ribald content. Fight Club, a profound meditation on the spiritual emasculation of the modern male in a world bereft of belief or hope, is simplistically condemned for promoting violent nihilism. And on it goes...''
Again, I have to ask: if these movies contain such effective messages for ''traditionalism'', why are these loud messages not reaching the drifting nihilistic masses out there, who need to hear them? It seems to me that most people, even the secular intellectuals, must be missing the messages, their attention being focused on the 'racy and vulgar dialogue' and 'raucous and ribald content.' That stuff does have a way of distracting from higher thought and deeper meanings.
''No one would ever claim that the representative sample of movies discussed above were "family-friendly." Still, a conservative critic with even a scrap of subtlety of mind and aesthetic discernment can see that, even if they fall short in certain crucial ways, there is, indeed, much to appreciate in these films. But the good, churchgoin', God-fearin' Plugged-In folks seem almost willfully clueless to such a possibility, smarmily set as they are on maintaining their lofty perch of sanctimonious disapproval.''
Why, I wonder, is the writer so bothered by these ''churchgoin' God-fearin'' folks and their opinions, or their 'sanctimonious disapproval'? When the people I dislike reject my opinions, it is reassuring for me, actually. Why court the approval of people one looks down on, and holds in obvious contempt?
''But even more irritating than the proclivity to reflexively dismiss and sniff at every non-Veggie Tales movie ever made, is the way the Plugged-In-style critic tends to react when challenged.''
Nonbelievers tend to react in an irritating way to their critics, also, and to dismiss and 'sniff' at anything wholesome or non-lewd. This is mystifying. Besides, the Plugged-In type sites are directed at believers; nonbelievers have no need or desire to seek them out. The nonbelieving world will do what it always does, and Christians are to separate.
The Christian's only objection is that this entertainment cannot be avoided; it is everywhere. Billboards, TV promos, radio spots, everywhere we go we see lurid or disturbing images and hear dialogue quoted from these movies. We can't avoid it. It is compulsory in a way, just like all the leftist propaganda in pop culture.
''What about all of those shocking stories from the Bible itself? Adam and Eve are naked without shame, Cain murders Abel, Lot has sex with his daughters during a drunken cave orgy, Onan spills his seed on the ground, David commits adultery with Beersheba and sends Uriah to his death, and the Isrealities wipe out just about everyone in sight over and over again... and all of that's just in the Old Testament! Yet the Bible is a holy book -- THE holy book. If it, Dante, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Homer, Milton, Poe, Joyce, O'Connor, and all the other faithful recorders of human vice, folly, perversity and corruption throughout the ages are allowed to tread in such waters, then why do you immediately look upon movies of recent years with suspicion and consternation if they deal with challenging material?"
This is so frequently brought up by the atheist or secular critic of Christianity: the charge that the Bible itself is lewd and obscene. If so, then most newspapers or history books are obscene when they describe immoral acts. The fact is, there is a world of difference between the Bible's treatment of the stories alluded to above and a secular source. The Bible describes these things bluntly and matter-of-factly, and invariably shows the bad consequences that follow sin. Everybody suffers by it. There is a moral, whereas in popular culture sin does not always bring ruin, far from it. It is glamorized.
I think most people on the right acknowledge that popular culture generally, as well as ''high culture'' are profoundly subversive of traditional ways and morals.
(Note: Beersheba, in the quote, presumably refers to Bathsheba.)
''To this, the self-satisfied Christian critic of the Plugged-In variety smiles blandly. "You're comparing Shakespeare to Pulp Fiction? I'm sorry... that just doesn't work!" While declaiming any qualitative equivalency between the Bard and Tarantino, you reply, why can't this question be asked? To this, he scoffs at first, taking the answer to be self-evident, but when you persist, he stammers that Shakespeare and everyone else who wrote a long time ago always wrote with a moral framework in mind, while contemporary writers are in almost all cases just scurrilous schlock-meisters whose only agenda is to mock all things decent. Suggest that your interlocutor is painting with the broadest of brushes and, moreover, speaking from pure ignorance, and you'll again be favored with a patronizing smirk, much like Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" character once fixed upon his guest before snarkily observing, "Well... we have our little opinions, don't we?"
Nice straw-man (or straw-woman) construction there. Talk about broad brushes. The Christian is always reduced to a caricature in these kinds of pieces.
''In the coming years of struggle, hopefully more true cultural conservatives, be they of Christian affiliation or not, will plug out of the "Plugged In" mentality, and will begin to entertain more independent and adventuresome aesthetic principles. Whatever your faith, it's not a sin to be provocative; indeed, extreme times call for extreme art. To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling pictures''
But who is being shouted at, and what are they saying? Is this shouting directed at the prissy stereotyped ''conservative Christians?" If so, what is the message -- that they need to get with the times? Christians do not need the conservative message; the ones who do are the very ones who eat up the 'provocative' entertainment and ask for more. Obviously they are not getting any kind of ''conservative'' or ''traditionalist'' message. I would venture to guess that all this ''edgy'' entertainment is consumed in large quantities by a predominantly liberal/leftist/libertarian audience, which would include most young people today. Why are they not getting any ''conservative'' message from these movies which 'shout' conservative messages? Perhaps they are deaf in a moral and intellectual sense.
If the aim is to destroy what vestiges of traditional Christian morality there are, then in what sense is this goal conservative or traditional? I don't see what is conservative about trashing middle America (which is grounded in old Christian morality, for most people) and established ethical precepts.
Many Christians, by the way, were once secular people who were steeped in the 'adventuresome and independent'' attitudes, but we left that behind. Nobody forced us to; it's just what happens naturally when you become a Christian. Not all of us have lived sheltered lives or shunned the world from birth onward. Not all Christians came from Christian homes, not by a long shot. So Christians have the advantage, in some cases, of having tasted the world, lived in it, wallowed in it and all its temptations, and yet walked happily away from it. Many nonbelievers only know life from a nonbelieving perspective.
And where does this profound division, this rift which is widening into a chasm, come from? It is all part and parcel of the counterculture and its conquest of American society which culminated in the 1960s and 70s. To return to the subject of 'South Park conservatives', they are nothing more nor less than a product of the 1960s. No such group or such mindset could exist, had not the (anti)ideals of the 60s prevailed.
The sixties generation, strangely, is abhorred by many on the 'new right', the secular right. I say this is strange not because the counterculture crowd is not abhorrent but because the secular ''frat boy'' right, the South Park conservatives et al, are the direct descendants of the sixties counterculture. The vulgar bathroom humor, the disrespect for everything staid and wholesome, the rebelling against previous generations, the refusal to grow up and be adults, the foul language, it's all derived from the ''free speech, free love'' mores of the counterculture. I find it odd that many of those on the right who say, as one blog commenter said somewhere, that ''I'll be glad when the baby-boomers all die off'' are the people who most emulate the baby-boom generation in their libertine, vulgar proclivities. They really should thank the baby-boom generation for making the popular culture which they embrace so fiercely. It's all of a piece with today's popular culture.
Had the counterculture never existed, or not succeeded, we would have a much more traditional culture today, and we would not be strangers to, or hostile toward, the culture and heritage from which we come. And we would not be so divided, one generation against each other, and nonbeliever against Christian.
The 'frat boy conservatives' with their outrageous pranks are the true heirs of the 60s, though I think that the 60s rebels believed that they were making some kind of statement against what they viewed as their parents' failed society. At some point, as the 'counterculture' became lionized by adults who should have known better, it became a kind of self-reinforcing conformism. One had to be leftwing, foul-mouthed, sexually libertine, and ''irreverent'' in order to be part of the in-crowd. Those who did not join in were ridiculed as squares, uptight, not ''with-it.'
The same thing happens now. The South Park conservative compartmentalizes his 'conservatism', puts it away out of sight, except when fiscal or small-government issues are at stake. In all other respects, he is a libertarian or liberal.
I know there are those on the right who think that social conservatives, especially Christians, drive people away from ''our side''. If only we were more hip, trendy, more in step with the times and all the pop culture fashions, then we could attract droves of people to our side. This is wishful thinking.
The thing is, social conservatives make the social liberals uncomfortable. We cramp their style, even if we refrain from saying anything to upset them. Even if we are as bland and inoffensive as Ned Flanders, to use a rather stale TV reference, we alienate some people, and that's to be expected. The other side of the coin is that the hardcore nonbelievers alienate the believers, and there are more believers out there than some people admit. It seems we need to go our separate ways, but the catch is that we are so few; we need unity or else we have no chance. We are stuck with each other as it stands now, which makes me as unhappy as it makes the other side.

Labels: Christianity, Conservatism, Libertarianism, Pop Culture, Societal Decay, Traditional Morality

First, the story being discussed here has been posted on a number of blogs and forums, and has occasioned a lot of discussion, most of it of the garden variety shock and outrage that accompanies -- and should accompany -- any discussion of such acts.
However, the linked discussion begins with a reasonable blog entry -- at least until I hit this sentence:
For that matter, while the possibility of the execution of an innocent man troubles me, I don't regard this consideration as very telling.''
Execution? Innocent man? I'm lost here, I confess.
First, there was no 'execution' in the legal sense. The man was stopped in the act of committing horrible violence on a child, violence which was real enough and serious enough to cause the child's death. He had to be stopped. As for his possibly being 'an innocent man' -- good grief; there were several witnesses to this thing, and it seems the police arrived on the violent scene in progress.
It would seem that there was little doubt about his 'innocence.' So I don't understand the blogger's mention of that as a possibility.
The discussion that follows degenerates into a 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' exercise in splitting hairs over capital punishment and whether it is or is not moral, or Christian, or fair, or whatever, and whether concern for 'potentially innocent' suspects should be given equal consideration alongside victims.
The exasperatingly pedantic tone of the discussion adds to the frustration it inspired in me.
Another thing: the discussion (and many of the news stories reporting the incident in question) made no mention of the name of the suspect. Just for the record, his name was Hispanic (Sergio Aguilar) and it may be he was illegal, but that is not the main point. His heritage and culture are not inconsequential, as far as I'm concerned. Why? Because culture plays a part in how we comport ourselves individually and in groups. And culture is linked with race. Certain groups are demonstrably more likely to commit violent crimes. That's something most oblivious 'I'm no racist' Americans need to understand; the fact that we are becoming a Hispanic country will not just mean more good Mexican restaurants. It will mean our country will come to resemble Mexico more and more, and this kind of thing is part of it.
But that's not the point of this post. I'm more troubled by the fact that even among conservatives, or 'conservatives', there seems to be a moral obtuseness that hints at how much liberal ideas have filtered into the conservative discourse. This fussing over whether the mad-dog individual beating the child was 'innocent', whether in a hair-splitting legalistic sense, or in an absolute moral sense, should not be taking place. At all. Especially not among conservatives.
30 years ago, maybe even 20 years ago, I cannot imagine those questions being raised and fretted over except among hyper-liberals.
Not so long ago, it was simply a given that should citizens or police come upon such an act happening, the attacker would need to be stopped, by whatever means worked, up to and including lethal force. The fretting about how someone could have stopped him without killing him is just decadent.
I suppose, in a way, this is a predictable side-effect of years of propaganda on the right about how ''all (human) life is sacred.'' Now, this line seems to have come into use as a weapon against the pro-abort crowd. However, the liberals, while not deeming unborn babies' lives to be sacred, certainly seem to think that all criminals (or suspects') lives are sacred. But was this idea of all human life being sacred a commonly-held idea in the old America? I honestly don't remember ever hearing it until after abortion became legalized.
Does the Bible say that 'all human life is sacred'? It certainly holds that all is created by God, and implies that all beings are created for a purpose. Since God is the Creator and giver of life, it isn't ours to decide arbitrarily to end a life, our own included, unless certain circumstances existed. The Bible commands capital punishment for murder. And here, the liberal will say, regarding the situation of the man beating the baby, that 'he hadn't been tried or convicted.' Yes, but under Biblical law, someone threatening innocent life is to be stopped from taking life, by force if need be.
The Bible always differentiates between shedding innocent blood and the blood of a criminal, or even someone in the act of harming another, who has not yet been 'tried and convicted'.
I have never been able to fathom the obtuseness of many liberals who cannot or will not see the difference between using lethal force to stop a dangerous attacker, or executing a killer, and taking an innocent life. It's as though most of our people in the West have become morally blinded.
Distinctions are important; how can we have reached the point where we seriously think that it may be morally wrong to kill a man committing such a heinous act? Can we no longer discern between killing someone for a valid reason, in extreme circumstances where a life is at stake, and wanton murder? Have we gotten too squeamish and too timid to deal with moral absolutes, and thus resort to shilly-shallying over life-and-death matters? I think we have, and I think this is manifest in many areas of our society these days. For example, our reluctance to defend our borders. Nobody wants to be unfair to these nice people who just come here to work and make a better living for themselves and their children. Like Mr. Aguilar, perhaps? Nobody wants to believe that among those nice, hard-working church-going, pious immigrants that there are some like Mr. Aguilar. We must always presume the best of everybody, the evidence notwithstanding.
We refuse to take tough stands and make hard choices. We would rather stand by and wring our hands and discuss fine moral points about the ethics of any possible action we might take to stop whatever evil we are up against. Sometimes, we just have to act and not stop to analyze and shilly-shally. (And by the way, that word comes from the phrase 'Shall I? Shall I?" The favorite phrase of the hesitant and the timid).
Sometimes we don't have the luxury of being timid and self-critical. Sometimes we have to 'act, act in the living present.'
But as for the question of killing a suspect, it's unfortunate, I think, that the English translation of the Ten Commandments uses the phrase 'thou shalt not kill' when the original phrase meant 'thou shalt not murder'. Hence the moral confusion of many about capital punishment. Every time some killer is executed and the bleeding-hearts gather around to protest and weep crocodile tears, the protesters carry signs saying 'Thou Shalt Not Kill.' And someone lectures us, saying that if we execute killers, we are 'no better than they are.' Such people are moral imbeciles.
As for the case of the man, Aguilar, murdering the child, I can only say that anybody who is not outraged and sickened by his actions does not deserve the label of 'civilized human being'. Anybody who wants to split hairs about whether or not he may have been 'innocent' has his priorities exactly backwards.

Labels: Capital Punishment, Crime, Justice System, Traditional Morality

There is an interesting discussion at What's Wrong With the World of the Palin issue, centering on the question of unmarried pregnancy. The participants in the discussion talk about whether there should be a stigma on unmarried pregnancy and illegitimacy and to the credit of some, particularly Lydia, there is mention of the double standards which have traditionally been applied in situations like that of Bristol Palin.
Here is one area in which the traditional ways were not the optimum: the disproportionate stigmatizing of the mother in such a pregnancy, while in many cases allowing the father to go scot-free, no condemnation, no requirement of support for the child, no nothing. As much as I say I believe in the old ways for the most part, the old ways were much harder on women in these situations.
Zippy, in referring to the scathing criticisms and condemnation of Sarah Palin and her daughter from certain quarters on the right, asks, as I have been wondering myself:
Where is the chivalry? Where is the class? Attacking her in that manner seems self-defeating. One can make the substantive points - as you in fact have - without acting a boor in one's treatment of a lady. Traditional men treat women differently from men.''
[emphasis mine]
Yes!
I think too many men have been wounded or angered by feminists and feminism and are now taking out their bitterness on women in general. This would be less objectionable if the same men did not claim to be traditional or conservative in outlook. Now, if we really want to return to the old ways between men and women, then chivalry is a part of that package. One can't disclaim belief in the equality of the sexes and yet expect to have free rein to attack women in the same way as men. In the old days, no man with any self-respect would pick a fight with a woman or challenge her to a duel, or take a swing at her, inviting her to 'fight like a man." But this is what many anti-feminist men on the right have been doing, and are doing in this Palin thing; they are saying women should be able to 'take it' like men -- as if they are in fact equal.
And do conservatives, really, after all, believe that men and women ARE equal and the same, and that thus men can take off the gloves and treat women the same as men? It sure looks that way from here.
And yes, I know exactly what some will respond: they will say 'the feminazis claim they are equal, so let them take it like men, if that's what they want.'' Sorry, no, it can't be had both ways. If a man attacks a woman as if she were a man, he is the one displaying a belief in women's equality; he is behaving as if she CAN take it like a man, and that he fully expects her to be able to duke it out on male terms, by male rules. Or does he fully know she can't, and is he thus looking to take on a weaker opponent, which is rather unchivalrous?
Chivalry was not a matter just of outward niceties, like the old story of Sir Walter Raleigh throwing his cloak down into a puddle so that a passing lady would not muddy herself. It isn't just about opening doors or pulling out a chair for a lady. It's the recognition that men and women are different and that because of the relative weakness of women, they are not to be treated as men.
Again, I hear somebody say 'well they want to be treated just like men.' And? People in Hades want ice water, too. Some women want to be treated just like men, but men insist on treating ALL women that way, with the excuse that 'the feminazis want it that way." Well, those feminazis (to use Limbaugh's rather tiresome term) don't speak for me or for a lot of women, and they weren't given power to dictate to us all. Why do men seem to capitulate easily to what 'the feminazis want'?
Some won't like my answer, but here it is: I think they want the same things as 'feminazis' want, in many cases, though for different reasons.
I think men withdrew all the little niceties because they were nursing a longtime resentment of 'having' to observe the chivalrous gestures. Men felt put-upon about opening doors or doffing their hats to ladies. That was obvious by how quickly they dropped the gestures. The phrase 'women's lib'' was barely coined before men started going on strike against chivalry. I remember way back in 1969 or so, when the "bra-burners" had just made the news (actually the bra-burnings were an urban myth, but that's another story). I was on a public bus in a big city, during rush hour, when some female workers boarded. There were many seated men, and not a few weeks before, these men would have vacated their seats for the women. This time, one man said, in a surly fashion: ''they want to be equal? Let 'em stand up!"
At that time, the prevalent belief among most men was that women had it easy, and didn't work hard as men did. Well, true enough, men did physically harder and more dangerous work then. But many of these women were not in white-collar or 'pink-collar' jobs; they were worn-looking women who worked in suitcase factories at grueling jobs, or who waited tables on their feet all day and had varicose veins. They were women who worked as seamstresses in sweatshops. These were not pampered, spoiled women. And I suspect that many of them had kids at home, and would have to cook a meal or do laundry when they got home.
But the rest of the men on the bus simply kept their seats and let the women stand the whole way home. Thus it was ever after that. The women didn't complain and no man broke ranks and gave a woman a seat.
At the time, I didn't think much of it, because I was a young liberal, and I thought, fair enough. Women ARE equal. We should stand up, same as the men.
However, I questioned this a short while later, when the strike by men extended to refusing to yield seats to elderly women or women in late stages of pregnancy or women with babies or toddlers in their arms. That, I thought, was thoughtless, to let those women stand as a way of punishing the 'bra-burners.'
In those days, I would get up and give the old women or the pregnant a seat, if need be. But the men seemed to feel no shame about not doing so.
Some of you might say, 'why should they feel shame'? Because as regards old folks, male or female, we should defer to them, and pregnant women, though not infirm by definition, still have a hard time keeping their balance on a moving bus or train. A pregnant woman's center of gravity shifts, and she has a hard time staying on her feet.
I think women's lib provided an excuse for men to drop all chivalrous gestures, which it seems many found onerous or unfair.
Men were glad to be shut of chivalry and its demands, and to cite 'women's libbers' as they were then called, as their justification for doing so. And they could feel quite self-righteous about it.
So it is now; men do not want the old system of chivalry, because they no longer believe in its tenets, in the idea that a real gentleman defers to ladies, regardless of whether he deems them worthy of those considerations. The idea behind it was that of noblesse oblige, not a sense of compulsion. If you believe that women are the frailer sex, or that they should be treated with gallantry, then you don't resent giving them small considerations and gestures. It showed nobility of character. It's easy to show consideration to those whom you consider to be your lessers in some way; it was in no way a concession to 'feminazis' but it was a magnanimous thing, an 'I can afford it'' thing.
At some point, men no longer believed in those things, so the small courtesies began to be treated as impositions, and when the first pretext presented itself, the courtesies were dropped like a hot potato.
I think few would disagree with me when I say that there is little courtesy in general in our society; we all feel equally entitled and nobody wants to yield to anybody else. Few people show special courtesy to the elderly now; this is also part of the anti-chivalry fallout. Elders are 'the weak' whom knights of old were sworn to defend and protect. How many people see old folks that way now? Most, including many conservatives, see old folks as a burden and an unsightly nuisance. Conservatism, for some, is a pretext for a selfish, mean approach to life. This is what kept me from identifying with conservatism for a long time, because I saw this 'rugged individualist' every-man-is-an-island meanness. Now, I can see that much of it is part of the classic libertarian mindset, which celebrates selfishness. But that mindset has prevailed among many 'conservatives' these days.
In general, even conservatives today behave in reality like rank egalitarians/individualists, with a 'devil take the hindmost', 'look out for number one' attitude.
And this de facto egalitarian treatment of women is in effect an affirmation of feminist principles. By "conservatives."
Another point in which many men agree with 'feminazis' is on questions of sexual morality and abortion. It's facile to blame all that on feminists, when people like Hugh Hefner and other men were on board with it. Why wouldn't they be? It made for more sexual license, with women persuaded that 'liberation' meant freedom to practice casual, commitment-free sex. Abortion meant that men would have fewer 'mistakes' that they would have to pay child support for. And women's pursuit of careers in place of marriage meant that many men, who were/are marriage-averse, would be able to preserve their vaunted 'bachelor lifestyle' much longer, with women who would be sexually available with no strings attached.
So, men's interests coincided with those of feminists, in many cases. And they didn't have to be burdened with chivalry anymore. No more opening doors -- ''because the women hate it." No more expectations of commitment before sex.
I don't believe that men in general, including 'conservatives', would welcome a return to the status quo ante. Not at all.
Too much of what I see today on the right is little more than knee-jerk anti-liberalism. The leftists and liberals believe in women in high office, so let's denounce women in high office. The liberals believe in working mothers, so let's condemn working mothers across the board. The liberals promote premarital sex so let's condemn it harshly and bring back the scarlet letter. Why stop there? Bring back the stocks and the pillory.
But only for women, of course. Apparently, women get pregnant by parthenogenesis, without a male playing a part in it, these days.
This latter-day anti-feminism would have us be more traditionalist than tradition itself. There has been a long tradition of women taking an active role in this society, long, long, before 'feminazis' came along, and long before the abominated 1960s. If you want to go way back, Tacitus, the Roman historian, described the high status of women among the Germanic tribes. Women were in prominent positions in Celtic societies in ancient times.
More recently, Alexis de Tocqueville described the high status of women in America. It is not a product of Rush Limbaugh's 'feminazis' or of 'hippies' or of Hillary Clinton. It's a longstanding feature of our Western civilization, like it or not.
So what 'tradition' are we harking back to in trying to put women back into their 'proper' roles? Cite me chapter and verse. What tradition? Where? When? Or are some conservatives confusing Moslem tradition with Christian tradition?
Generally I believe that mothers should stay at home and care for their young children. When the children are of school age, however, I don't see why a woman cannot or should not work, as long as her mothering duties are not neglected and her children not shortchanged, and as long as her husband does not object.
Full disclosure: I have been both a working mother and a stay-at-home. Given my preference, I would have stayed at home permanently. But we don't always get what we want in life. Conservative or no, we cannot always control our life's circumstances. It is an ideal but it is not always reality.
Conservatives, above all, should be the ones who can differentiate between an ideal, to which it is good to aspire, and the realizable, which is often what we can realistically manage in an imperfect world.
It grieved me to leave and go to work every day; I can honestly say I shed tears over it. But one does what is necessary sometimes.
Many working mothers feel bad enough about leaving their children without being castigated and called bad mothers or bad Christians for it.
By the way: those of you who object to working mothers will, I am sure, support some kind of welfare payments for widowed or divorced women who would otherwise have to leave their children to go to work.
What's that you say? No? Then I see a contradiction here. Is staying at home only reserved for some?
Not everybody has family they can rely on for childcare, remember, in this day and age of mobility and family disintegration. And curiously, many 'conservative' men are opposed, somehow, to paying child support or alimony, so leave their ex-wives to support or partially support the child(ren). I could cite many instances of this.
One more thing: 'conservatives' have often very vocal in demanding that many divorced or widowed women on assistance get up off their lazy behinds and go to work, placing their kids in daycare. Is this not inconsistent with the idea that all children deserve to have their mothers at home? Or are only wealthy women allowed to raise their own children? It seems to me that conservatives who believe in full-time mothering have not thought this question through.
I remember Newt Gingrich's proposal to bring back orphanages as an alternative to welfare.
So where were Gingrich's family values there, if all children need their mothers?
I am not calling for taxpayers to support all women who want to stay at home with their kids, but maybe if we can afford trillions for war in Iraq, we could afford to subsidize stay-at-home moms --- IF we truly believe it is a must for mothers to be at home. But actually I am not convinced that we really believe this. I think the attacks on working mothers have ulterior motives; it isn't about keeping moms at home at all, but about making political points, or it's a feeble kind of striking back at the faceless 'feminazis.'
But either we believe in the ideal of women caring for their own children, or we don't. There should be no double standards, one for women in intact marriages or women with plenty of money, and a second for women who are alone due to divorce or death, or women whose husbands earn too little to support the family. Maybe there is some truth to the liberal stereotype that conservatives are out-of-touch people who are wealthy and insulated from reality.
Believe it or not, I am about as traditional as you get on these things. But I see no reason to try to establish some kind of pre-'feminazi' Golden Age which never was, and punish all the women who don't conform to the ideal. That is not what tradition means. Tradition means
1 a: an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom) b: a belief or story or a body of beliefs or stories relating to the past that are commonly accepted as historical though not verifiable 2: the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction 3: cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs, and institutions''
It does not mean some mythical ideal which never existed in reality.
Cultural continuity means that we are bound to what actually existed, not what we wish had existed, and not what ideally would exist in some perfect world.
I think conservatives need to seriously re-examine where they stand, because they are all over the map on these things.

Labels: Egalitarianism, Feminism, Social Conservatism, Traditional Morality