This is one of the thought-bombs that people use to end a discussion. Like "separate but equal" or "racial profiling" or "H8" or "ethnic cleansing" or "racist".
I am, I have discovered, actually in favor of second-class citizenship. Not surprising, since a lot of my opinionating and H8ing on this blog is a reaction to the coercive egalitarianism worming its way through a once great civilization. This time the barbarians didn't even have to attack and sack; they just talked the Romans into surrendering because, if they didn't, it would make the barbarians feel bad and that would mean that the Romans were not nice people. Bang vs whimper? Whimper's the odds-on favorite.
Take gay marriage. I'm not in favor. Some kind of civil union would be just fine, IMHO. But that would mean, wait for it, second-class citizenship. Well, gay unions are second-class,
Now I am not talking about individual unions, of course. The kingdom of Heterosexia is littered with the detritus of marriages gone bad. Were this not the case, soap operas --and at least half of modern literature, popular and highbrow--would have no plots. This is not surprising or even slightly novel: if men and women had the natural inclination to bond and raise children amicably without any other centrifugal forces at play, we would not need the institution of marriage. People would have just been shacking up happily, successfully and peacefully since forever. Never happens. Maybe we'd like to be Bonobos, but we're not. Much more Chimpy.
And on the other hand, I know same-sex couples whose relationships, while not perfect --who's is?--, are admirable, worthy of respect. But the thing is, society cannot exist without marriage, ie, male-female marriage. Can't be done. No one ever has done it, no matter how flawed or varied the particular arrangements have been. But no society needs gay unions. Not necessary. At all. So aside from personal or group ego issues, I don't see why gay marriage is any kind of a moral necessity.
The only world where it can become The Next Big Thing is in the world of coercive egalitarianism, where the driving energy not only of politics but of culture is liberalism. Which, to repeat Ex Cathedra's definition, is a systematic program of replacing historically successful groups with historically less or unsuccessful groups, replacing Oppressor Classes with Sacred Official Victim classes, by means of State power and PC social control. A dictatorship of the victimariate. And the Seven Pillars of this "social justice" cult are multiculturalism, feminism, redistributionism, pacifism, secularism, transnationalism and environmentalism.
The LGBT movement is a sub-part of feminism, whose aim is to replace patriarchy with matriarchy by getting us all to believe and act as if the sexes were interchangeable and that men, therefore, when not pathological, noxious, criminal or stupid, are entirely optional.
In a world based on nature and common sense, there would be all kinds of classes of citizenship and a lot of them second. Even now, we consistently discriminate against minors, not allowing them to tell us when they are ready to join the electorate or leave school, but dictating from an oppressive adult viewpoint based in our hegemony and fear.
Equality is a trance.
I am, I have discovered, actually in favor of second-class citizenship. Not surprising, since a lot of my opinionating and H8ing on this blog is a reaction to the coercive egalitarianism worming its way through a once great civilization. This time the barbarians didn't even have to attack and sack; they just talked the Romans into surrendering because, if they didn't, it would make the barbarians feel bad and that would mean that the Romans were not nice people. Bang vs whimper? Whimper's the odds-on favorite.
Take gay marriage. I'm not in favor. Some kind of civil union would be just fine, IMHO. But that would mean, wait for it, second-class citizenship. Well, gay unions are second-class,
Now I am not talking about individual unions, of course. The kingdom of Heterosexia is littered with the detritus of marriages gone bad. Were this not the case, soap operas --and at least half of modern literature, popular and highbrow--would have no plots. This is not surprising or even slightly novel: if men and women had the natural inclination to bond and raise children amicably without any other centrifugal forces at play, we would not need the institution of marriage. People would have just been shacking up happily, successfully and peacefully since forever. Never happens. Maybe we'd like to be Bonobos, but we're not. Much more Chimpy.
And on the other hand, I know same-sex couples whose relationships, while not perfect --who's is?--, are admirable, worthy of respect. But the thing is, society cannot exist without marriage, ie, male-female marriage. Can't be done. No one ever has done it, no matter how flawed or varied the particular arrangements have been. But no society needs gay unions. Not necessary. At all. So aside from personal or group ego issues, I don't see why gay marriage is any kind of a moral necessity.
The only world where it can become The Next Big Thing is in the world of coercive egalitarianism, where the driving energy not only of politics but of culture is liberalism. Which, to repeat Ex Cathedra's definition, is a systematic program of replacing historically successful groups with historically less or unsuccessful groups, replacing Oppressor Classes with Sacred Official Victim classes, by means of State power and PC social control. A dictatorship of the victimariate. And the Seven Pillars of this "social justice" cult are multiculturalism, feminism, redistributionism, pacifism, secularism, transnationalism and environmentalism.
The LGBT movement is a sub-part of feminism, whose aim is to replace patriarchy with matriarchy by getting us all to believe and act as if the sexes were interchangeable and that men, therefore, when not pathological, noxious, criminal or stupid, are entirely optional.
In a world based on nature and common sense, there would be all kinds of classes of citizenship and a lot of them second. Even now, we consistently discriminate against minors, not allowing them to tell us when they are ready to join the electorate or leave school, but dictating from an oppressive adult viewpoint based in our hegemony and fear.
Equality is a trance.
3 comments:
I blame Catholics.
No really. Prot intellectuals agreed to yield intellectual leadership to Catholicism, and in fact most Prot intellectuals who opposed cultural secularism swam the Tiber. We were to accept that conservative practical wisdom of Thomist Aristotelianism was the only way to speak in the public square.
As Straussians have persuaded us, they and every other nonChristian can't be converted to Christian doctrine by revelation from holy writ, and accordingly we must first speak the language of philosophy.
Similarly we must not venture a dominion founded in revelation but (in what is call'd practical wisdom or phronêsis) must try to get secularists to see the logical conclusions of their values in a reductio ad Hitlerum (if it's okay to kill unborn babies, then who's to say it isn't okay to kill Jews?).
Never mind that the only notable Thomist Aristotelian of this sort seems to be the Anglican divine Richard Hooker (d. 1600).
Never mind that the RCC hadn't enculturated a Catholic politics in terms of Thomist Aristelianism in the Catholic countries of Europe, but had -- quite properly -- enculturated those countries in terms of Catholic Christianity, beginning with the glory of the Church. The glory of the Church is the prophetic theme of the first document or 'constitution' issued by the V2 council.
Just yesterday the Canadian Council of Bishops issued a 12-page letter whose subtext seems to be cultural failure. "Positive" contributions to "society" by Catholics or Christians should be not only "help[ing] the poor or house the homeless" but also refusing to perform gay marriage, write prescriptions for contraceptions, etc. No mention of correcting 'radical secularism' by the meanings of nature in the Summa theologiae.
Apparently the communiqué makes an oblique reference to Romans 2:14f »The letter notes at one point that following one’s conscience must “be accompanied by accepting the duty to conform it to … the law which God has engraved on our hearts."« But this isn't made the foundation for stating a moral doctrine that should rule civil law and jurisprudence. There is no thought that conscience should rule ("dominion founded in grace," eh?). The point is the Christian should follow his conscience and accept the penalties meted out.
The point seems to be the martyrdom of Christian pharmacists, for instance: dismiss'd from their employment for refusing to provide morning-after pills. This toward a growing martyrdom of Christians under the authority of radical secularists and whatever successors secularism may have in terms of providing Shariah for western countries.
»Worldwide, amid attacks on Nigerian churches, the massacre of Coptic Christians in Egypt and even mandatory sex education in Europe, “Christians now are the most persecuted group in the world,” said Archbishop Smith.«
»In resisting, believers should “be prepared to make the sacrifices necessary … and to bear the suffering that results.”«
It is only the evangelical haters who have granted legitimation to the president vis-a-vis his liberal support base and advisers when he has spoken more explicitly of God and the Christian biblical worldview, as at his ground hog's shadow day breakfast address this year.
In 'The Audacity of Hope' (©2006; 2008) he had to assert of the "American population" "Whatever we were, we are no longer is just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers" (p. 258). To this 'sectarian' differentiation is added the sectarian differentiation within American Christianity, which is to establish that biblical revelation cannot guide the ruling of American society.
Previously Americans such as Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day [Roman Catholic after Thomas Aquinas's heart], and Martin Luther King, Jr., "used religious language" to "argue their causes" (p. 259). And evidently the religious language involved was necessarily Christianity since "our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition" (ibid).
But what was okay for Martin Luther King is not necessary today (2006), when the president must argue that while it's okay for Americans to »inject their "personal morality" into public-policy debates«, »What our deliberative(?), pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific values. It requires that their proposals must be subject to argument and amenable to reason. ... accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all« (p. 259).
While restricting the president to such secularism may seem advantageous to liberals, there is no little danger in demanding of Christians that they cease positivist appeals to "God's will" or "the teachings of my church" (ibid), the Summa theologiae freed from Aristotelian evasion precisely does set forth the Bible in terms of an amen to reason or ratio giving.
It was in a way a convenience to obscurantists within Christianity when "everyone" was Christian. The reasons didn't have to be stated. Christian morals and lingo could be asserted positivistically or formalistically as values. Mere phrases from the Bible would do fine. But the liberalism of postWW2, still utter'd in 2006 and beyond could issue a veto to such things on grounds that America is no longer an "everyone's Christian" culture. Biblical prophecy must fall silent, or speak substantively, not formalistically.
The president's Candlemas address six years after the publication of "The Audacity of Hope" was free to speak or had to speak no longer totally formalistically from the Bible, especially in the Bible's revelation of the underside of the world.
Luckily enough for liberals, but presumably not for America, the Republicans' nomination of an LDS will compel a renew'd silence on the Bible, since LDS and "conservative" Christians will be said to agree on 'values' and must keep alleged disagreements on Christology out of the discussion of what's wrong with America.
But what's wrong with America was perhaps ironically stated in 2006, sc a dereliction of Biblical prophecy: »We do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be« (p. 261). Back then, the president had to observe that today's Department of Children and Family Services would intervene in an emergency action and prevent the Akeda of Isaac.
The president proposed a essence of analogy or proportion as a necessity guide-for-the-perplexd ('book'd' js943) binding "those who police the boundaries between church and state" (Audacity of Hope, p. 261).
These police presumably constitute American Merodach's wall or firmament separating state from church constituted -- personnel form'd by 'religion' e.g. 'Christian activism' for obedient will-to-power.
The esssence of proportion seems to accept the Jewish and Christian shirks or analogias for guidance of the divine police, namely Ezra's translating the torah for the exodus rabble from Persia, and revelation of the Christ's divinity (cf Quran 9:30) (p. 261). (The Quran seems to derive Ezra's name as Uzair from js247 gird up, bind, compass about. Perhaps the Quran provides such help with its version of every biblical figure's name.)
"Wisdom" in religious personnel-formation for "politics," then, differs from wordings said by religion to culturally accomodate modern life and the counseling of flocks (ibid).
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