Free at last

I was very involved in the church for much of my life. At a certain point of crisis, I realized that we were not compatible, so I did the gentlemanly thing and departed. It was not easy...some would say that I have never really cut the cord...but it had two beneficial and liberating effects, both of which I am grateful for to this day. First, of course, my emotional and sexual life were simplified. No escape from the complexities of human love and eros, but at least I did not have to hide or make believe anymore. That was a great relief. The second one was that I no longer had to make believe that I was nice. People could not say to me that my opinion on this or that was "un-Christian."

For too many folks, "Christian" has come to mean little more than "inoffensively nice." Not true, but a very common attitude. Since I left my ancestral religious home, no one holds me to that stupid and infuriating standard any more. The world is full of morons, horses' asses, etc. I have been free to say so and have liked that.

My political liberalism, however, proved to be as much of an incentive to lie as my ecclesiastical affiliation had been. More, actually. Here I was prohibited from noticing many many obvious truths because they were offensive to the ego of certain sanctified groups*. "Racist", "sexist", etc.

As an evil conservative, I now get to tell the truth as I see it and no one is surprised by my coldheartedness. And one of the truths of life is that there are losers. Some lose from bad luck or circumstance. Many...many...lose because they are stupid and/or immoral. I worked in a city clinic a few years back and came face to face with lots of folks who were recipients of the public benefice as well as the interest of the courts and police. And some of them...I am thinking of one woman in particular...were both stupid and immoral. Her life was a mess and her selfish and dumb decisions only created more pain for other people, especially the two charming and likely doomed little boys she'd had by two different men...and the third one on the way by yet another. Because she was black and female, I was not supposed to notice that. But it was as plain as day. I noticed.

Heather MacDonald relates the latest set of expensive self-soothing lies our liberal betters have unleashed, and Shrinkwrapped attests to what I also discovered: "the problems of the multigenerational poor in America stem not from their lack of opportunity, as in the Third World, but from their inability to seize it."

*There are certain unsanctified groups, however, who may be insulted with impunity and who are in fact considered just made for that. For example, white Southern Christians, male and female both. But they are probably racists and sexists, so it's ok.

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