Here’s an amusing remark from Lawrence Auster on conservatism, liberalism, and the Hegelian dialectic process whereby, as the liberal thesis moves leftward, the liberal/conservative synthesis tends to follow:
In the Hegelian Mambo, as the left become more left, the right, in defining itself in opposition to the ever-more threatening extremism of the left, and not in terms of unchanging principles of its own, abandons its prior positions and moves ever further leftward itself. Thus, for example, at the rate we’re going on the life-style front, in ten years’ time a conservative will be a person who disapproves of sexual intercourse between humans and animals, and in fifteen years’ time a conservative will be a person who disapproves of marriage between humans and animals. The moderate position will be to support civil unions.
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Auster has it exactly wrong. The Left is no more left than it was a decade or two ago. It probably is less left. However, the Right is much more right than it ever was.
Richard Nixon was once the poster boy for conservatism, yet he enacted wage and price controls and started the EPA. Ronald Reagan raised taxes and (gasp!) compromised with Democrats. Neither of them would survive the orthodoxy which defines conservatism today. The current Republican candidates for President espouse such wacko ideas as repealing the direct election of Senators, prohibiting Muslims from erecting mosques (I’m looking at you, Herman Cain!), returning to the gold standard, seceding from the Union, stringing up the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, and closing the EPA. If they went any further right, they would have difficulty constructing coherent sentences.
I went to the link to see if Auster could offer any evidence for his unsubstantiated and unfounded claim, and of course there was none. Once I came to his remark that the Left “no longer supports national self-defense against our mortal enemies,” there was no need to go further. Another wacko whose contemptible views are untethered to reality.
Well, I agree that Auster can be a tad hyperbolic, and he’s far more of a social/religious conservative than I am. But the Framers wrote “wacko” state election of Senators right into the Constitution, and the US was on the gold standard as recently as 1971. There were coherent sentences written in those days, I think. (Do you have any evidence for your contemptible view, untethered to reality, that conservative political views imply illiteracy?)
I’m not aware of anyone advocating hanging Ben Bernanke.
Also, those remarks of his were written in 2004, when much of the Left was outraged at our military response to 9/11.
I don’t think that conservative political views imply illiteracy. Not at all. Some conservatives — such as the late William F. Buckley — are exquisitely literate. However, once you go outside the spectrum of acceptable political discourse to the extremes, you enter the land of incoherence. Glenn Beck is one such example. Nor is this phenomenon exclusive to the Right.
Rick Perry accused Bernanke of treason — which is a capital offense — and promised to “treat him real ugly” if he entered Texas. This was shortly before Perry made a number of uninformed and incorrect remarks about the Fed (such as his demand that the Fed “opens its books.” It does: every Thursday afternoon on the Internet. Or that it should “stop printing money.” The Fed doesn’t print money. The Treasury does.) And, sad to say, this is the front runner for the Republican nomination for President.
(As an aside, I predict that Obama will be reelected in 2012 by dumping Biden and running with Hillary as his VP. This will rally disaffected members of his base and appeal to independents and women.)
Let’s look at Auster’s syllogism:
1) Liberals favor bestiality.
2) Liberals favor the marriage between man and beast.
3) Because there is a putative inexorable trend to the left, these views will be mainstream views in 10 or 15 years.
Are there any liberals who favor bestiality or man-beast marriage? Howard Dean? Harry Reid? Nancy Pelosi? Bueller? Bueller?
I am unaware of any prominent progressive who publicly supports either thing, and regrettably Auster won’t provide the goods and enlighten us. Maybe he should ask diaper-clad David Vitter or Larry Craig — he of the wide stance — what their views on the subject are. However, if you’re going to assume that it’s a prima facie case that progressives are big proponents of man-beast couplings, it would be helpful to the reader to provide at least a scintilla of evidence.
The statement that the Left “no longer supports national self-defense against our mortal enemies” is beneath contempt. It is also, like every other sentence in Auster’s piece, exactly wrong. Under George Bush, al Qaeda thrived, the search for bin Laden was jettisoned, and Qaddafy ruled Libya. Under Obama, bin Laden is dead, Qaddafy is in hiding, and al Qaeda has been weakened almost to the point of irrelevance. However, I wouldn’t expect that pesky things like facts would get in the way of the great gusts of miasmatic vapors which suffuse Auster’s writings.
It is incorrect to state that in 2004 “much of the Left was outraged at our military response to 9/11.” Much of the Left was outraged at the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Despite the best attempts of the Bush administration to conflate the two, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
Obama hadn’t even been elected to national office when Auster wrote those remarks.
As for Perry’s remarks: there’s plenty of that sort of thing to go around on both sides. (And qualitative easing might as well be printing money; I’m sure Mr. Perry knows that the Treasury runs the Mint.)
Of course nobody is talking about tolerance toward bestiality today. We’ve only just legalized gay marriage, after all; these things take time! (Anyway, there will likely be group marriage to deal with first.) But it’s hard to imagine on what principle one might coherently object to it, given where we’ve got to. If we can no longer insist that marriage is between a man and a woman, then on what grounds do we insist that it must be between a human and a human? Auster’s point is that once the old traditional “absolute” standards go, what seems “beyond the pale” becomes just a fluid social convention. (Mind you, I don’t care; I don’t have a god in this fight. I think it’s probably best if the government gets out of the marriage business altogether.)
I agree with you that there is now a new, reactionary Right that is far less apt to shift leftward, and to engage in the “Hegelian Mambo” Auster talks about. But the nation has moved to the Left in many ways over the years; it’s hard to imagine that a JFK, for example, would be very popular with the Democratic base in 2011. As for social liberalism, certainly gay marriage wouldn’t have been a possibility in 1961.
Anyway, I’m not here to defend Lawrence Auster against his critics, of which he has many, even on the Right; he can manage that on his own. (I’ve already had one pretty good scrap with him myself a few years ago, right here at waka waka waka.)
I just thought the brief passage I excerpted was, as I said, amusing.
I’m glad you choose not to defend Auster’s odious beliefs. They are indefensible.
Equally indefensible is your suggestion that there is a linkage between gay marriage and bestiality. There is not. Nor is there some slippery slope which leads from one to the other. There is absolutely no connection between extending the benefits and protections of marriage to gays and legalizing man-beast marriage. Nada. Zip. Zilch. But I think you know that.
As you note, we have evolved since 1961, in terms of gay rights, civil rights, women’s rights, and so forth. I’m not sure if this is a trend towards the left — I view it as a more perfect realization of the creed that all men are created equal. If you want to brand that as left wing, I have no problem with that. Certainly the struggle to provide gays, women, and people of color with the same rights as straight white males has been fought tooth and nail by the right, so perhaps it is a left wing concept.
I’m puzzled by your remark that JFK would not “be very popular with the Democratic base in 2011.” He was intelligent, forward thinking, and deeply embraced core American values. I see no reason why he would not be as popular with the Democratic base in 2011 as he was in 1960.
Fiscally, Kennedy was a tax-cutter and supply-sider. He backed Joe McCarthy’s fervent anti-Communism, was a huge supporter of Israel, tough on crime and labor-union corruption. A centrist at most, even by the standards of the day.
You missed the point about bestiality, which is that once you’ve got past “Marriage, as it has always been for all time, is this and this ONLY”, there is no longer any coherent social or political principle upon which to object to it, other than that it’s “icky”. Likewise group marriage. Anything goes.
Obama is a tax cutter. Taxes are lower now than they have been since the Truman administration. Your suggestion that JFK was a “supply sider” is arguable, at best.
Kennedy was anti-Communist because we were in the midst of a cold war with two nuclear powers which were sworn to destroy us. Today we are not. By assuming that the left would automatically reject any muscular defense against mortal enemies, your argument is as fatuous as Auster’s. Hold on: it is Auster’s argument! Silly me.
There are many on the Left who are highly supportive of Israel, as well as many who are not. Certainly Obama has been unstintintly pro-Israel, including his vote next month against Palestinian statehood. So to assume that a pro-Israel stance is anti-left has no basis in fact. There is a diversity of viewpoints here.
Your suggestion is that the Left is in favor of crime and labor union corruption?
I did not miss your point on bestiality. Even if one were to accept your reductio ad absurdum argument about group marriage, or marrying minors, or whatever, there is no slippery slope leading to bestiality or getting marrying your Dachsund. It’s binary: there’s man and there’s beast. To quote the Dead: it’s one way or the other. There is nobody – may I repeat? nobody – who advocates anything as abhorrent as bestiality.
No, the prevailing sentiment on the Left has tilted sharply against Israel recently, and its staunchest friends are on the Right. If you don’t think so, you haven’t been paying attention. And this adminstration has done Israel no favors – calling for a return to the indefensible pre-1967 borders, supporting the ouster of Mubarak, etc.
I do give Mr. Obama credit for resisting the Palestinian move at the UN., and he is certainly more sympathetic to Israel than, say, Jimmy Carter. But he is nothing like the friend of Israel JFK was.
My suggestion is that the political Left is very strongly allied with labor unions today, far more so than JFK was. Look at Jimmy Hoffa Jr. warming up the crowd for President Obama the other day, and yelling that we should “take the sonofabitches out”. Etc.
Anyway, as usual this thread has devolved into a right-vs.-left shouting match. Let’s focus on the actual point here.
And when it comes to that, you HAVE missed my point, as shown by your remark “It’s binary: there’s man and there’s beast.”
That same sense of binariness used to apply just as intuitively to “there’s marriage of a man and a woman, and then there’s everything else.”
And as I said, when you make your case based only on bestiality being “abhorrent”, you show that have no other principle to bring to the argument other than the “ick” factor. But the idea of two men getting married was once “abhorrent”, too.
And what about group marriage? On what coherent principle would you object to that?
Marriage is a legal contract which confers several unique benefits to its participants, such as child custody and rights of survivorship. It has traditionally been defined by the following necessary and sufficient conditions:
1) Both parties must be of the human race.
2) Both parties must be of legal age.
3) Neither party can be married to someone else.
4) The marriage must be voluntary for both parties.
5) Neither party can be related to the other, except perhaps in Arkansas.
6) The marriage must be between a man and a woman.
Over time, society evolved to the point where a growing number of states have recognized that the sixth criterion unfairly discriminates against gay couples, who ought to enjoy the same benefits as straight couples. Because their sexuality is exogenous to the rights they should enjoy as citizens, the ban on gay marriages meets the legal definition of invidious discrimination. Hence the coherent principle which rejects group marriage, marrying a minor, or getting hitched to your hippo is that the first five criteria which define marriage are necessary and proper, because they are based on things like necessity, practicality, and the incest taboo. However, the sixth criterion is sui generis, as it is not based on any of these grounds and constitutes an injustice which is gradually being rectified.
“Under George Bush, al Qaeda thrived, the search for bin Laden was jettisoned,…”
Sorry for your bubble Peter, but it was flimsy anyway. Except for the ill advised abandonment of the attacks and bombardment on Tora Bora the search was never, “jettisoned.” If you require links – advise – but for some I’ll have to relay through Malcolm, I’m kinda skittish about posibly violating OPSEC. (You however are free to wander through Wikileaks).
“…and Qaddafy ruled Libya. …”
As the guy had done for what, 30 years prior? Indeed, it was only after Obama got elected that direct sales and shipments of arms recommenced. It’s late in Arkansas but I will come back on and give open-source links for that.
“…Under Obama, bin Laden is dead, …”
Refer to the above.
“…Qaddafy is in hiding,…”
And how the hell does Obama get credit for that?
“…and al Qaeda has been weakened almost to the point of irrelevance. …”
Google AQAP.
Nice try, Pete, but there’s nothing in those five criteria that mitigates against group marriage.
And in your last paragraph you say that the first five criteria are necessary by “necessity” (rather a circular argument there), and because they’re “practical” (as if if everything “practical” were necessary to enshrine in law!).
As for marrying your hippo, I think future generations will look back on reactionary conservatives like you as obstructionist fossils. There’s no reason why suitable modifications to the survivorship rules couldn’t be made to work around issues like child custody (I’d expect there wouldn’t be too many kids in those trans-species marriages, but then again for all I know the family of the future might be a woman, a lesbian capybara, and their adopted Malawian baby).
The point is: who are we to stand in the way of true love?
The third criterion precludes group marriage. By definition, group marriage involves being married to someone else.
There are certain universal principles of contract law, based on practicality and necessity, which also apply to the marriage contract. Animals have no rights and cannot be a party to a contract. Minors have very limited legal rights, which do not include signing contracts. Coercive contracts are invalid. We don’t allow minors or animals to be party to any kind of contract, nor do we allow coercion. Marriage within families is prohibited for, among other things, the practical reason that any offspring would likely reside in the shallow end of the gene pool.
However, we allow gays to sign contracts. Moreover, a contract cannot discriminate against or penalize gays because of their sexuality: it is a textbook example of invidious discrimination. Hence states which allow gay marriage not only do so with a clear line dividing it from other, prohibited marriages, but those states which ban it allow a form of discrimination which is unique and arguably unconstitutional.
As for being in love with your hippo: God bless you crazy kids, and I hope you have many happy years wallowing in a slurry somewhere. To paraphrase Barbra Streisand: people … who love hippos … are the luckiest people in the world. But if you’re going to the chapel and you’re gonna get married: regrettably, we must quote from Chicken of the Sea. Sorry, Charlie.
No problem with that third criterion: we just modify it to say you can’t be married to anyone outside the group. No bigger deal than modifying 6). Equally easy to continue to let contract law continue to exclude the non-human spouse (blatantly discriminatory, but there you are).
Really, you’re such an old moss-back, Peter. SO judgmental.
I am. Mea culpa maxima. Also stuck in my ways. For example, I invariably read the various sections of the Sunday New York Times in the same sequence, week after week, year after year. I do the crossword puzzle in ink. I attribute these shortcomings not so much to laziness or inflexibility as to a more general lack of moral fiber. I can only aspire to the evolved state of mind which accepts artiodactyls and cetaceans as suitable marriage material. Until then, I’m afraid that I am doomed to a life of hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
An interesting exchange. Since I can never resist throwing in my two cents, I’d like to offer the perspective of David Hume. Hume’s insight was that morality is evolved, not designed: groups of people that followed ‘superior’ morals outcompeted groups of people that did not. It was only later when we could look back and try to reason about why certain rules work and certain rules do not.
Thinking about things from this angle, it should be pretty obvious to you that marriage between a man and a woman is conducive to group survival, while same sex marriage is not: heterosexual marriage produces children, while homosexual marriage does not, men with children (and nagging wives) work harder and produce more, etc. Thus it should be no surprise that same sex marriage was not a trait that passed the harsh test of evolution.
When a person is raised with a certain morality, it imprints itself on a deep, almost instinctual level in their brain, and it results in feelings (not conscious thoughts) of disgust towards things that go against it. You feel that a little animal loving is disgusting because you were raised that way, as I imagine that most of us were, and again for good reason: a nation of sheep fuckers will never conquer the planet. Your parents felt the same way about gay marriage, and for the same reason: a nation of gays will never conquer the planet.
P.S. As a libertarian, I am a huge supporter of individual rights. But gay marriage is not about individual rights, its about forcibly changing the thoughts of others.
I don’t disagree with Hume that there is a utilitarian basis to social mores, which over time leads to societal advancement. However, there are two problems with your thesis.
The first problem is that there is no straight line between gay marriage and group survival. Whether straights work harder than gays is highly questionable, as anyone who’s taken time off from work to see their kid’s soccer games can tell you. For your argument to be valid, you would have to show that societies which restrict homosexuality (the Islamic world) do better than those which accept it (most of the developed world) or glorify it (ancient Greece). Good luck with that. Moreover, while it’s anyone’s guess whether “a nation of gays will never conquer the planet,” we can rest assured that at least the planet will be much more tastefully outfitted.
The second problem is the statement that “gay marriage is not about individual rights, its (sic) about forcibly changing the thoughts of others.” Gay rights is most definitely about individual rights. What else are they about? I’m not sure what “forcibly changing the thoughts of others” means. When Rosa Parks rode in the front of a segregated bus, you might say that she forcibly changed the thoughts of others. Why is this a bad thing?
Love is a many-splintered thing. But a splinter in the grass is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Well as a skeptic I don’t think anyone can show that. On the other hand, patriarchy and marriage are almost universal, and the Islamic world is still with us, while the Greeks were conquered by the Romans, who if memory serves were also stepping off the straight and narrow when they were conquered by the Germans, who have done fairly well but are currently declining due to (shock) feminism/multiculturalism/etc.
My comment on on ‘forcibly changing the minds of others’ was perhaps somewhat poorly phrased in hindsight. What I am trying to say is that in my opinion there is a huge difference between what you choose to do, and demanding that society approves of you. The first is your choice, the second is theirs.
One of these things is not like the others:
Batshit-Crazy Pelosi is a great public servant.
Obama has been unstintintly (sic) pro-Israel.
Pol Pot was a great humanitarian.
Dick Ed is a dickhead.
Everybody has the right to say stupid things. Henry abuses this privilege.
Peter is the arbiter of (self) abuse.
BTW, a “right” is an entitlement (something leftists can’t get enough of). It doesn’t make any sense to assert that a “right” can be abused as a “privilege”, which is a far different thing.
Henry, being the annoying little pisher that he is, does raise a useful distinction. While I certainly have the right to ignore his flaccid and jejune comments, it would be a real privilege to avoid the putrescence of his uninformed and uninteresting scribblings entirely.
No, no, no guys! Don’t either of you ignore anything.
I’m on duty here in boring Arkansas and it appears Malcolm has exited stage right. I need the both of you to help me make it through the night.
Heavens to Murgatroyd!
I’m your Huckleberry …