An obvious lesson of post-election complaints by leftists is that highly-educated and well-connected Blues, including famous commentators on public affairs, simply don’t understand Reds. They haven’t a clue as to how most of their countrymen look at things or why they look at them that way. Hence the fear, loathing and fantasy.
Some explanation of the basic Red frame of mind may be in order. The most important difference relevant to American politics, I think, is that Blues assume the world is made of constructions, while Reds are more likely to think it’s made of realities. That difference means different positions on any number of issues:
- If the moral world is something we invent then choice is the master principle that trumps all others. If it’s a reality then it takes on the quality of divine law and it seems smart to put more stock in God.
- If the value of an unborn child is created by those connected to it, then free abortion makes sense. If the child is real, with an integrity and value that don’t depend on what others think or want, right-to-life makes more sense.
- If marriage is a matter of the desires of individuals and the legislator’s decision it makes sense to adjust the law to facilitate the equal expression of what different people would like to do. It makes no sense to do that if marriage and the family are realities preceding individual desire and the state that every social order likely to be at all tolerable depends on.
- If human relations are always what we make them, then reinterpretation, dialogue and organizational jiggering can solve all international and social problems. If other people are what they are, and have whatever qualities and goals they have without much regard to us, then there may be necessary or helpful policies (“suppress theft,” “defend your territory,” “look out for family and give to the local food pantry”) but we can’t in general make things the way we want them. “Social justice” and “world peace” become distant aspirations rather than policies.
The basic Blue view, from a Red point of view, is that reality should be reconstructed to fit what they want and Blues have a natural right to the power needed for that end. That’s actually a sensible view if the world is made of constructions that can be reconstructed, and trained people in the big centers are the right people to do the reconstructing. Reds find that view unrealistic, self-aggrandizing and alarming. Blues correspondingly find Reds at best unimaginative and self-satisfied, and at worst downright evil.
don’t you think that a law ag
don’t you think that a law against gay marriage is a construction? how is conservatism, in the case of this election (that is— as according to the feelings of those red states voters) based on reality? in reality, what does george w. bush have to offer? in reality, what does turning back the clock on progress have to offer in terms of realistic profit for our country. isn’t “moral values” more of a construct on which to base a vote than, say, health care, education, REAL ISSUES that are important to those “construction ridden” red states?
What’s a construction etc.
1. Any statute is a construction in the sense that someone has to draw it up. The point though is that marriage and the family — a man, a woman and their children living together and recognized as an fundamental and enduring social unit by custom and all authoritative social institutions including law — is not a construction but a natural institution characteristic of homo sapiens and always and everywhere fundamental to human society. Try to do away with it or pretend it’s the same as things that are quite different and in fact at odds with it and you’ll have big problems.
2. My post wasn’t about W but about the Red point of view.
3. “The clock” and “progress” presume judgments that I believe unfounded and in fact wrong.
4. Moral values are the commitments and understandings by which we live together. As such they are obviously much more important than formal programs and institutions.
Rem tene, verba sequentur.
Is the closing of constitutional loopholes “a construction”?
Myst. Str. asks, “You don’t think a law against [homosexual] marriage is a construction?” No. The problem is, there is no such thing as “homosexual marriage.” It’s as if some group wanted to declare four-year-old boys “adults” so they could vote, let’s say, or—as NAMBLA would like—so they could “choose” to perform fellatio on, and receive anal penetration by, adult homosexual men. ( * ) The problem would be, there’s no such thing as a “four-year-old adult.”
You might as well ask if a law against “square circles” would be “a construction.” There’s no such thing as “square circles”—and of course no law declares that they don’t exist, becasuse no such law has ever been needed. If some group of el-sicko malcontent fanatics found a way to, let’s say, harm architecture, or harm civil engineering, by getting their friends into positions where they could officially declare the “reality” of “square circles,” there’d be strictly nothing wrong with sane individuals getting together to do something about it by, for one thing, getting their friends—i.e., normal people—into positions where they could undo the damage to civil engineering and to architecture, by amending state constitutions if necessary, in such a way as to prevent future corruptions of state law or faulty, harmful interpretations of state law, along those lines.
“Homosexual marriage” does not exist—it is a contradition in terms, a logical impossibility—and normal people are entitled to protect their society against the harm inflicted by the attempted imposition of that fantasy on us by means of legal loopholes, naked judicial fiat, and the like. Sorry, but we’re closing the loopholes. We’re restoring something called … (wait for it) … normalness.
( * I’m sorry for the shocking language and images here, but let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? This hypothetical comes from an exchange I heard—maybe half-a-year ago—on the Sean Hannity radio program in which Sean was talking to a homosexual caller who was a NAMBLA activist. Sean gave him an unusually long time on the air—maybe fifteen or twenty minutes (often pretty heated, as one can imagine), to see what his views were about legalizing homosexual sex between grown men and little children. What brought the conversation to an end was when Sean asked him down to what age, exactly, NAMBLA wanted the right to have sex with boys. He avoided answering for something like five minutes, during which he kept changing the subject, accusing Sean of bigotry, hate, etc.—the usual—and so on, but Sean finally pinned him down, sternly insisting on an answer. You’d think he’d have said down to age thirteen, eleven, something like that—already disgusting enough. It was age four. Nambla wants adult homosexual men to have the legal right to have homosexual sex with boys down to age four. Hannity couldn’t believe what he was hearing—neither could we listeners—and after telling the guy what he thought of him, abruptly ended the conversation.)
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“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.
Similar experience
Fred, your story of the NAMBLA radio interview reminds me of something that happened when I was at uni. I was living in a share house with 7 or 8 other uni students. I was complacently liberal at the time, until one evening we had a late night discussion on the topic of “At what age is it OK to commence sex?” I argued, I thought daringly, that once you were past puberty it was OK (something I’d disagree with now). The gay guy in the house, who was normally a very caring, considerate and mature guy, jumped up indignantly to oppose what I said. He told me that we are all sexual from birth. His boyfriend then agreed with this position.
No-one said anything, but alarm bells were going off inside my mind. It was the first really unsettling moment that led me to start questioning left wing politics.
Wow…
I knew NAMBLA were sick buggers, but between your and Fred’s posts in this thread, my eyes have opened further. I, too, have a university story; the bisexual nose-ringed woman (this was circa 1993, one of the first nose rings I saw) in the residence apartment below mine, told me that she knew, from when she was five, that she was attracted to females… To her credit, she didn’t say five-year-olds should be involved in intercourse, but still – I thought, and still think, Five? I knew nothing whatsoever about sexuality at age five! Let alone being attracted to girls – at that age, girls were these weird, scary creatures, with whom I really wanted as little to do as possible…
Either she was lying to me, for political reasons, or they really are way messed up perverts, even worse than I’d previously imagined…
The confused support this stuff; so do the purely malicious
There’s something else motivating the Blue mentality that Jim—generously, in a way—leaves out: a malicious intent to harm society. Yes I realize we’re not supposed to stray into ad hominem accusations of malice—exactly what the other side constantly does to us—but must give them the benefit of the doubt, according an assumption of rationality to their behavior—rationality by their lights, at least. Yet I am convinced there are many among the left-liberals who simply are so strongly malcontented vis-Ã -vis normal society and normalness in general that they—without knowing why and without taking the trouble to reflect very much—are powerfully attracted to anything they see instinctively will further society’s destruction, so that, once completely destroyed, it can be replaced with something better in their eyes (some vague form of Marxism is what they generally wish for). My point is there are many who know perfectly well that—to take just one example—there’s no such thing as “homosexual marriage” but rejoice anyway at seeing the push for it, since they instinctively know, as do the rest of us, that through such means society (which they hate so much) might be brought down. And so they enthusiastically support it though inwardly they know perfectly well it’s utter nonsense. In other words they are acting out of sheer malice. I have no doubt that that is a big motivator of a big portion of the left.
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“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.