Another poll that looks into the red state/blue state divide in American politics that we’ve discussed before: Americans deeply split over politics. The main conclusion is that
“married and single voters live not on different planets, but different solar systems, when it comes to their politics and values … Republicans have a problem with single voters, especially single women. The Democrats’ problem is with married people, especially married women.”
All of which makes sense. Liberals want to get rid of traditional institutions like the family, and connections to particular people generally, as the basis for social order. They want to substitute abstract universal institutions like the world market and the bureaucratic PC welfare state. So it’s not surprising that those who marry and so accept particular connections and traditional institutions as the basis for who they are should reject liberalism, while those who don’t marry accept the views all current public authorities tell them to accept. (It’s interesting, by the way, to see the company that American Catholics have fallen into.)
Comments
Just so I have this
Just so I have this absolutely clear, Mr. Fiore: You endorse the proposition that the Liberal State may suppress certain kinds of dissent, namely, the dissent of “judgmentalism”? And, on the logic of the Open Society, there is no limit to the _means_ by which the Liberal State can suppress this dissent (because, of course, to admit limits is to admit truths or standards _outside_ the principle of the Open Society)?
If the above statement fairly describe your position (and please correct me if they do not), then it is quite clear to me why the advent of the Open Society Liberal State must be resisted unceasingly.
Moreover, if the Liberal State is achieved in this country through means other than constitutional amendment process, then it is quite illegitimate, and makes no valid claim to the assent of American patriots and citizens. For the very document by which “We the People” became one people precludes the Open Society: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
And again, in the United States Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
There are six proposition there to which we are committed — Unity, Justice, Tranquility, etc. — and none of them can be construed, absent the most brazen of sophistry, to point to the Open Society.
What I'm saying is that
What I’m saying is that pseudo-moral hooliganism has nothing to do with the “pursuit of happiness” or “more perfect unions”. If you really want to get into the first priciples subscribed to by the founding fathers, we can that Paul—but believe me, they were more concerned about tyranny/Papistry than sexual orientation back then, so be careful about reading your own ideology into the roots of America—that would be sophistry of the grossest sort. There is no sanction whatever in the country’s history for shame-based “volk” ideology that is espoused at this site. Even Jim Kalb knows the founding fathers are on MY side Paul (not that they would have agreed with me on every particular, mind you—but my thoughts are more in line with the tradition than yours are…)
Shall we lay this to rest?
You can get busy stockpiling armaments for a confrontation with the inevitable.
Dave
Actually, I don't know that
Actually, I don’t know that the Founding Fathers were on Mr. Fiore’s side. Thomas Jefferson, for example, proposed castration as the penalty for consensual homosexual acts. I don’t believe he proposed any comparable penalty for papolatry, let alone shame-based volkisch whatevers (to the extent such things are relevant to the discussion). I do believe that some of the formal public commitments of the FFs have had catastrophic consequences. Does it make sense, though, to say that a man is “on the side” of all the ultimate implications of his stated principles?
As regards homosexuality, my impression
As regards homosexuality, my impression has been that in discussions here and at VFR the outcry isn’t against homosexuality but against its legitimation, against the push by homosexual groups for society’s official approval of their sexual perversion through teaching in elementary schools, high schools and colleges that it is normal, through extending the traditional state of matrimony to include homosexual partners, through according to homosexuality the legal status accorded to a race for example by means of the enactment and interpretation of certain sorts of anti-discrimination statutes, through high-level official gestures like the deliberate, explicit selection of United States presidential cabinet members afflicted with this perversion (Janet Reno and Donna Shalala for example) and of judges at all levels of the judiciary — both state and federal — who suffer from it, etc., etc. Homosexuals can do what they like among themselves. Normal people don’t want it forced down their or society’s throats thank you very much. That’s all we ask. (It is well-known that those who are shocked at seeing these attempts to force it on society as something normal, healthy, and good include many homosexuals.) Mr. Fiore will find that those of us who do not want this forced on us or forced on our children or on our society are not going to be flexible about the question. We are not going to compromise about it. Can he understand what that means?
Clarification of the comment above:
Clarification of the comment above: No one on our side has any objection whatsoever to a cabinet member’s or Attorney General’s being privately homosexual. That’s his business; we’re all entitled to have our private defects, blemishes, and imperfections in life (up to a point, of course). The objection in the case of Janet Reno is that she was chosen *explicitly because* she was a lesbian. They explicitly wanted a homosexual woman for that post.
Whatever discrete points of agreement
Whatever discrete points of agreement the Framers had with Mr. Fiore’s Open Society Liberalism (anti-Catholic many of them were for sure), they stand squarely against him on the central point at issue here: namely, the reality of objective and absolute standards of moral judgment. In short, a moral law which exists _outside_ the incessant rumblings of the human intellect, which is discernable by reason, and applicable to all places and all men, to which We the People have solemnly committed ourselves, and about the refinement and perfection of which we are all, as Americans, locked in argument. “We hold these truths.”
I’ll note, also, that I am not particularly concerned (at least in this context) to discover “what the Framers _really_ thought”; whether they were more influenced by Locke or Rousseau or Montesquieu, etc. I am concerned with the documents they produced which are binding on us as the highest law of our Republic.
In that sense even the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which are the two primary instruments by which judicial usurpers are attempting to foist Open Society Liberalism on us by fiat, must be understood as operating within a structure laid out in the Constitution — a structure, again, which aims at forming a more perfect Union, establishing Justice, insuring domestic Tranquility, providing for the common defence, etc, etc.
That is to say, even th First Amendment, currently (mis)interpreted, is subordinate to other principles.
"Mr. Fiore will find that
“Mr. Fiore will find that those of us who do not want this forced on us or forced on our children or on our society are not going to be flexible about the question. We are not going to compromise about it. Can he understand what that means?”
Aww—does this mean that you aren’t prepared to accept that “fur is murder” either? I was so hoping to convince you!
All I ask is that every point of view be given a fair shot. I know you people are hopelessly retrograde and it makes you feel good to say “gay people are perverse”; “people outside of the true faith are going to hell”; “interracial marriage is the tool of the devil”; etc. etc. Aging, frightened, misanthropes. That’s what you sound like, and that’s what you are… It’s okay, I understand your motivations, and you’re welcome to them… However, I trust that—with enough exposure to influences from outside of your bigoted homes—your children, and your children’s children, etc. will gradually shed their prejudices. But that’s what you’re afraid of—isn’t it?
Dave
One last thing--"One person can
One last thing—
“One person can walk on the grass. If everyone walks on the grass, there’ll be no grass to walk on.
Posted by: Unadorned at January 29, 2004 08:23 AM”
if you’re afraid you’re the kind of person who “tramples the grass” then you’re right to to zip-lock your brain in the hermetic doctrine of the Church… but keep in mind that there’s an even better institution that we’ve devised for people who can’t help tresspassing against others in our society—it’s called prison!
Dave
Mr. Fiore writes:<br />"However, I
Mr. Fiore writes:
“However, I trust that—with enough exposure to influences from outside of your bigoted homes—your children, and your children’s children, etc. will gradually shed their prejudices. But that’s what you’re afraid of—isn’t it?”
I don’t consider it even a remote possibility, actually. The narcissistic pluralists don’t reproduce in enough numbers to be much of a factor a few generations out. The real problem for my grandkids’ kids is more likely to be escaping from under the tyrannies wrought by the progeny of the third-world replacement populations currently being imported on mass scale. It is really anyone’s guess what they will actually face, but my confidence that whatever it is it will not be narcissistic modern liberalism is very high.
Mr. Fiore wrote,"[D]oes this mean
Mr. Fiore wrote,
“[D]oes this mean that you aren’t prepared to accept that ‘fur is murder’ either?”
People on my side 1) don’t agree that slaughtering or hunting animals for food, fur, or other necessary or useful animal products is murder or wrong; 2) feel that animals should be treated at all times humanely and to do otherwise—to torture or otherwise mistreat them—is very wrong and we fully agree with the laws against that; 3) favor all normal wildlife conservation measures such as bag limits on hunters, catch limits on fisheries including whale fisheries where needed, interdiction of all hunting of endangered species like certain big cats hunted for fur, elephants for ivory, rhinos for horns, certain raptors or carion birds for feathers or sport, etc., etc. “Normal” conservation measures means ones that make sense to a normal person, rather than the way-out-radical-left-wing-looneytoon-Marxistfront-nihilistic-psycho-weird ones that the left keeps trying to shove down everyone’s throat exclusively in order to destroy society. Those we don’t favor, while we do favor all normal ones.
“[I]t makes you feel good to say ‘gay people are perverse’ […]”
I’m not sure in what way gay people—that is happy, festive, merry people—would be perverse. Incidentally, my side rejects by and large the other side’s replacement of the word homosexual with the word gay, just as it rejects other “countercultural terms of implicit approval” such as the expression “doing drugs” in place of “taking drugs,” and many others. As regards homosexuals, their condition is not normal but a sexual perversion, an illness, exactly as are sexual sadism, sexual masochism, necrophilia, coprophilia, pedophilia, and many other pathological conditions in the broad category of sexual perversion. Calling someone “perverse” is of course different from saying he has a sexual perversion.
“people outside of the true faith are going to hell”
I can’t comment on this, not knowing enough about my religion, which is Catholicism.
“interracial marriage is the tool of the devil”
My side doesn’t believe this. We endorse Steve Sailer’s view that “everyone should marry the one he loves,” regardless of race, religion, or other considerations. My side is not against interracial marriage. Notice that opposing genocide-by-excessive-incompatible-immigration-carried-out-by-detached-and-aloof-élites-for-personal-gain-against-the-wishes-of-the-races,-ethnicities,-populations,-and-communities-which-are-being-destroyed-and-exterminated is not at all the same as opposing inter-racial marriage.
”[…] misanthropes. That’s what you sound like, and that’s what you are”[etc.]”
Any number of times and in a multitude of ways voices at VFR have correctly identified the other side—the side making this “misanthrope” accusation, above—as precisely what it is, namely a will to death of self and the utter extinction of everything else; a will to nothingness, to the void. All who desire that outlook are welcome to sign on.
There’s an alternative: those who oppose nothingness; who favor somethingness; who are against entropy and in favor of meaning; who oppose the void and favor existence. At bottom, Mr. Fiore’s side opposes somethingness, opposes meaning, opposes existence.
"...if you
“…if you’re afraid you’re the kind of person who “tramples the grass” then you’re right to to zip-lock your brain in the hermetic doctrine of the Church”
Well, all this is good clean fun, like Voltaire’s witticism that “religion began when the first charlatan met the first fool”. But, Dave—seriously, now: could you identify specifically the profound philosophies and broad intellectual vistas that open up for the person who leaves the ‘zip-lock bag’ of the Church? I’d really like to know, because truthfully, I can’t think of any.
But Paul, repeat after me,
But Paul, repeat after me, ‘hermeticity is vice and leakiness is virtue.’ Indeed the more holes from which one leaks (intellectually of course) the more virtuous one becomes.
Mr. Fiore wrote (today, 01:53
Mr. Fiore wrote (today, 01:53 PM),
“if you”re afraid you’re the kind of person who ‘tramples the grass’ then you’re right to to zip-lock your brain in the hermetic doctrine of the Church— but keep in mind that there’s an even better institution that we’ve devised for people who can’t help tresspassing against others in our society—it’s called prison!”
He completely misunderstood the meaning of the post of mine which he was commenting on. In my post I had meant to say that, just as people who disregard the “Please Don’t Walk on the Grass” signs do no harm individually but would bitterly regret it if everyone did the same (since there’d be no lawn left), so people who disregard all religion do no harm individually but would bitterly regret it if everyone did the same, since there’d be no civilization left. They have no understanding of what creates the world around them, including the things they very much value.
Unadorned--I did not misunderstand what
Unadorned—I did not misunderstand what you said. I merely expressed my FAITH in the proposition that human beings are capbable of respecting each other without being blinkered by dogma. You expressed an opposing point of view—presumably because you are certain that you would run amok if you weren’t afraid of the moral authority of the church… Let’s just get it straight in our heads which side has a lower opinion of humanity.
Or, then again, let’s not bother to get anything straight. You people aren’t arguing against ME anyway, you’re opposing a straw bogey man that your parents scared you into believing in.
The only difference between us is that you all feel quite comfortable making psychological/moralistic judgments about other people’s private behaviour, and I am not.
It might surprise you to learn that I, personally, lead about as unimpeachable a life as you guys could ever want. For instance, it would be analogous to a sin for me to ever:
—intoxicate myself with drugs of any kind (including alcohol, which I’ve never touched)
—have sex with anyone I did not love
—harm another being (yes, that includes animals—and I understand that it will be a while, maybe centuries, before other people agree with me on this point, and I don’t preach vegetarianism because I’m a liberal, and we just don’t do that kind of thing—my girlfriend eats meat and we don’t discuss it and there’s no problem—can you people even imagine a close union between two people with such opposed opinions… probably you can’t. but it works for Christine and myself because we are BOTH liberals)
—tell lies, fail to make an effort to make genuine contact with people
aside from the fact that I don’t feel I need to enter into a religiously sanctioned union with my girlfriend, I don’t think you people could find any fault with me—except for the fact that I deny your right to authoritarian government.
Like I said—think about it. Or don’t. The choice is yours. Just don’t assume that I’m some kind of narcissist/hedonist/fringe-lunatic because I take people as they are, and I think you should too.
Dave
David.<br /> You are a product
David.
You are a product of our age.
Post Modernism is the intersection of narcassism & nihilism. (who said that?)
This produces what they call a “herd of free thinkers”
Your thoughts as presented here..
may be right, you may be wrong.
but one thing is for sure.
Your not uncommon.
Who ever said I wanted
Who ever said I wanted to be uncommon?
Dave
Mr. Fiore, You wrote:<br /> I know
Mr. Fiore,
You wrote:
I know you people are hopelessly retrograde
Me:
I don’t know if I count as “you people” since I rarely post here, but I am a traditional conservative, or at least as much as one can be in our society. Specifically an rather traditional (though not very good) Orthodox Christian, which probably would seem rather retrograde to you.
You:
and it makes you feel good
Me:
Why would you assume that someone’s opinions and beliefs concerning the following issues are primarily based in “feeling?”
You:
to say “gay people are perverse”
Me:
By “gay” you mean homosexual. Look up the word “perverse” in the dictionary. Now explain to me how someone who believes that the moral law taught by traditional Christianity (whether Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, or traditional Protestantism) is normative for all of humanity would not affirm that homosexuality is perverse. Thus homosexuals are perverse at least in regard to their sexual practice. A soul afflicted with a soul-destroying perversion does not make me “feel good.” In terms of my society, it is true that I am bothered by a homosexualist agenda, but with regard to the souls of individual homosexuals all I can do is pray for their change of heart and mind (repentance) and God’s mercy and stand firm in my defense of Church’s teaching.
You:
people outside of the true faith are going to hell
Me:
Well this certainly does not make me “feel good,” if it is indeed true in every single case. Why would I take delight in the eternal suffering of fellow men?
Of course, I do not and cannot speak for all traditional conservatives, but as an ideal (if not always in practice) I hold to the words of a recent Orthodox saint from one of the more un-PC places in modern Europe (Mt. Athos), St. Silouan the Athonite:
“Do only good, don’t seek revenge, never hold grudges, be happy and joyful, don’t get upset, feel no hatred, anger or resentment, have no aversion nor repulsion against anyone, don’t judge, sincerely forgive, strive to be reconciled with all, feel compassion and pity for all, sincerely wish salvation for all, pray for all, and love equally no matter who or what they are.”
Part of loving someone is certainly being concerned about their salvation, and about their going astray. So this does not mean that we do not defend what is right. Nonetheless I admit that there is always a danger for traditionalists of morphing into what you seem to think we are, and that is why those of us who are Christians must examine our consciences daily, to make sure that we keep our first principles first and the love of God in our hearts.
You:
interracial marriage is the tool of the devil
Me:
I certainly do not feel this way, though some conservatives probably do.
It should not have to be said that there are a lot of different views on race besides “self-anointed crusader for multiculturalism and leftist notions of equality” and “cross-burning gapped-toothed kluxer.” On the paleo and traditionalist right, this ranges from those like Robert Nisbet who believed that race was entirely a social construct to Jared Taylor who is a kind of racialist and “yellow supremacist” (if I am correct he believes that in most areas in which whites on average outperform blacks and hispanics, Asians on average outperform whites). I personally do not think that the reasoned opinions of others on race automatically qualify them as “bad people” because for me race and views of race are not nearly so polarizing an issue as they are for most leftists. In fact, I agree with Thomas Sowell that if any progress is ever to be made in our understanding of race and racial differences, researchers (including scientific racialists) must be allowed to do their research without being hindered by PC police.
To return to main point: if someday I have a daughter and she comes to me wanting to marry someone of another race and she asks for my blessing, I will be far more concerned about whether he is an Orthodox Christian of traditional views and morality, a genuine patriot who loves his homeland and the best of its traditions, someone who sees the culture formed by true Christianity as ideal, and in short someone worthy to enter into the sacrament of holy matrimony with my daughter, than I will be about his race. However, it does not particularly bother me that there are some men and women who consider interracial marriage to be undesirable (generally for more and more complex reasons than “it’s the tool of the devil”).
You:
Aging
Me:
Yes, since the day I was born, but I am not as far along in the process as you are, my friend. (From previous posts I think I learned that am something like 7 to 10 years younger.)
You:
frightened
Me:
About some things, not others. Surely the same holds for you?
You:
misanthropes
Me:
Being a Christian who fully believes in the incarnation, I am not sure it is possible for me to really hate “anthropon,” or “anthropous” in general.
You:
I understand your motivations
Me:
I am not so sure about that.
You:
However, I trust that
I appreciate the responsive response
I appreciate the responsive response Jeremiah, believe me, and I don’t think I have any problem with most what you’re saying (if you want to hope that homosexuals “see the the light”, that’s your right…)
but the crux of my disagreement with Turnabout has been over the question of authoritarian government. if you’re in favour of it, then I count you among those I labelled “you people”. If you’re not, then I’m very pleased that you’ve found a life, and a faith, that works for you. I’m happy for you either way really—but in the first case I have to fight with you, in the second case I can do what I WANT to do, which is defer to your judgement about what’s best for you.
Dave
You'll have to define your
You’ll have to define your terms for me here, Dave. I do not consider the view of government put forth by Mr. Kalb to be “authoritarian,” though I may not agree with it in every particular. But I am not sure how you are using the word. What in particular seems authoritarian to you about the view of government set forth here? Perhaps you’ve been reading longer and more closely than I.
This bit, <a href="http://thrasymachus.typepad.com/t
This bit,
http://thrasymachus.typepad.com/thras/2004/01/more_on_wolfe.html#more ,
from Thrasymachus Online (excerpt below), makes a point which is closely related to the one I was trying to touch on in my posts about “What if everyone, not just one person, disregarded the ‘Please Don’t Walk on the Grass’ sign?; i.e., What if everyone, not just one person, disregarded religion?”
Excerpt from Thrasy’s web log:
“JJ: That is an interesting perspective on it I hadn’t thought of at all. My wife had one of her professors who taught in a Moslem country for a while and said he woke up one day and saw the children had a bunch of kittens they were throwing up in the air and hitting with a baseball bat against the wall and the mothers just sat by and watched. He said, ‘I am not a Christian, I am an atheist, but I am a Christian in that I could not tolerate that.’ There has been an influence in our society that has made us different from pagans.
“GW: We vastly underestimate the importance of Jesus. We think we don’t. We have all these churches and we say how can we be underestimating Jesus? We don’t until we start trying to figure out what it would be like if he had never lived. When you really start trying to figure out what it would be like if He never lived you realize that He is a much more pivotal figure than we give him credit for. All of these people, everybody at this convention is in that sense a Christian although most of them would tell you that they are not and some of them would tell you quite truthfully that they were Jews who practice Judaism in one of its various forms and so on and so forth. Nevertheless they have been influenced by Christ much more than they realized. We are very lucky to have had Him. We are very fortunate. A friend of mine learned to read Turkish. And he got hold of a Turkish joke book and read it. And I said, ‘What were the jokes like?’ He said it was horrible. They were all about ugly tricks that were being played on blind people and things like that. This is what we have escaped from and we don’t realize that it is there and we came very close to falling into it. We very easily could have and we still may.”
Paul wrote (Jan. 30, 02:51
Paul wrote (Jan. 30, 02:51 PM):
“Well, all this is good clean fun, like Voltaire’s witticism that ‘religion began when the first charlatan met the first fool.’ ”
For any who may not be aware of this, Voltaire believed profoundly in God, as is evident in many of his writings and as was stated explicitly by him in various places. Among the things he objected to about organized religion of his day were certain complex tenets and rules of formal Catholicism that struck him as not coherent yet which Catholics were obliged to accept of course by the powerful clergy of that era in France. And he was repelled, as so many thinkers have been down through the centuries, by human failings on the part of the clergy, such as outrageous hypocrisy, wrong-headed political influence, etc., etc. Voltaire could be scathing in his criticisms of the organized Church. But he most definitely was not an atheist or agnostic. He believed in God.
I understand that he had
I understand that he had a Catholic chapel built on his property. But he also looked forward to the day when “the last king would be strangled with the entrails of the last priest”. And his slogan “Ecrasez l’infame” apparently refers to the Church—”crush the infamous thing”. The word “conflicted” springs naturally to mind…
For a lawyer, Fitz, you have
For a lawyer, Fitz, you have terrible grammar, your argument against whatever Dave stated is incoherent with no support, and your vocabulary simply stinks.
What law school did you go to?
If you believe homosexuality
If you believe homosexuality is a perversion you apparently have no room to accept how people are brought into the world. Reading your comment did nothing less than make me disgusted with the negative traits you have given to individuals. What if a person were to say that a childrens book portraying heterosexual families as -I’m sorry, what did you call it, oh yes “normal”- was immoral? What if they called it perverted? Would that make sense to you at all? I don’t think so, maybe your views are narrow and unfiltered, but at least I have the satisfaction of being able to sleep at night knowing I haven’t failed at being a descent human being. How are you sleeping lately, “Mysterious Stranger”?
P.S. You see, what schools are trying to do is teach children about the realities in the world. Your children will learn about the real world one day, and when they learn about Gays and Lesbians I think it’s fair to provide them with what homosexual families can be and are like-“NORMAL”. If you fail to recognize the homosexual community as equal to you, you are only contributing to the seemingly progessing view of hatred among this diverse world that we live in. If you fail to be open minded, you fail to learn.
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