Keep your dang bulwark
You know, bulwarks are useful things when there’s a hurricane, or a flood, or maybe a mob of ravenous aggressive rabbits approaching the town; but other times, not so much. There are some bulwarks we don’t much want, some bulwarks we’d rather not have, thanks. Take your bulwark and go away. This one for instance.
Why has the church taken a stand on [the issue of gay adoptions] when it barely protested against the introduction of civil partnerships last year? Is this largely a symbolic issue, a stand-in for a much deeper debate about the relationship between faith and the state? Does the church see itself as the last bulwark against an encroaching tide of liberalism?
Maybe so, and if it does, it needs to go away and repent. It needs to go far far far away, like into the metaphysical possible world where ‘God’ necessarily exists and no one else does, and hang its mitred head and repent. Or if it can’t repent, it just needs to go far far away and leave us alone. We don’t want any damn bulwarks against encroaching tides of liberalism, thanks. That is the very last thing on earth we want – the BBC put that very neatly. No thank you. No churchy bulwarks against encroaching tides of liberalism, but on the contrary, an encroaching tide of liberalism that sweeps all before it. Liberalism good, anti-liberalism bad. Tide good, bulwark bad. Liberalism in this context clearly means general liberty from taboos and exclusions and punishments, from oppression and deprivation and subordination that have no rational basis, and that is a good thing and opposition to it is a bad thing. Hey hey, ho ho, churchy bulwark gotta go.
The protest about “gay” adoptions and non-protest about “civil unions” is indeed odd …..
But not nearly as odd as believeing that a “god” who can creat the whole universe (TM) is going to bothered about where you put your dick for fun, without hurting anyone ……
Maybe bulwarks are useful things for Jesus Lizards as when frightened by liberal predator’s approaches the lizards will surely drop to the water and run across the surface. It most certainly would not do to have them encroaching on the tides of Liberism. Yeah, amen/awomen I say unto ye flush them out but fast yeah, real fast, hold them back with mighty force. We do not want the Liberal waters clogging up with their stinking taboos, exclusions, punishments, oppression, deprivation and subordination of human beings.
Remember the Berlin Wall? Bulwarks can fall too. My hammer and chisel are ready…
Dang, Marie-Therese, you have a vein of real poetry in you.
The Berlin Wall…I very nearly ended the post with a version of ‘Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ – but decided I couldn’t bear to invoke Reagan even in a revised version. But yeah – bring on the hammers and chisels. The perfect ones and the imperfect.
“Discrimination against Catholics”? That’s like saying that getting rid of Jim Crow laws was discrimination against the KKK.
Well of course that’s exactly what the KKK would have said had anyone asked them. Just as getting rid of slavery was discrimination against slaveowners. It can be quite amazing how good victimizers are at seeing themselves as the victims.
Not everything about this tide of liberalism is so great!aprox half of the children are growing up without daddies.
Ah, discrimination against catholics …
However, there were, once, very good reasons for that.
When the Pope told catholics it was OK to murder the monarch, and overthrow the state, and three European monarchs were assasinated by catholics, because they were not hard enough on the others, and when your country (population at the time ~5 milliion) suddenly had to accomodate 50 000 ferugees (i.e. a 1% increase – the equivalent of 600 000 today) and that in the space of less than a month – October/November 1685.
No wonder it took anti-catholic “prejudice” a long time to die down in the UK!
Or maybe, the reason they speak on one issue and not the other is that civil unions for GLBT people are their own business and the church stayed out of it, whereas the adoption issue is about the church’s own agency acting in accord with their moral grounding?
I have not seen you post any attacks by the church on the entire issue of adoption by male gay couples, although that is where the implied problem is.
Hey, GT, you stole my line! [1st post]
And wasn’t it 1585?
No, the edict of Fontainbleu was 15/17 October 1685.
The Huguenots fled France immediately.
20 years later, one of them was the first governor of the Bank of England…..
Well, well, well, ACH so, Pope Benedict XVI has made it very plain that he believes Christian “values”
“are” being threatened in Europe! Verily, verily I say that Christian
“values” have always been compromised
and threatened by Holy Christians. Jawohl, not only on the Vatican’s bulwark doorstep, but also throughout Ireland and yonder. To seek verification of same one only has to check its ILLICIT archives and that too of the lives of those who were entrusted into the care of the Roman Catholic Church. SEHR GEEHRTER HERR PAPST es ist sehr shade!
“whereas the adoption issue is about the church’s own agency acting in accord with their moral grounding?”
But is it ‘moral grounding’? Or is it just taboo or yuk or gut-level hatred dressed up as moral grounding, and dressed up in pretty religious clothes to boot. I say it’s the latter, and I’ve claimed that throughout these discussions, so it’s a bit evasive just to ignore that issue. I say it’s the latter because the bishops do such a bad job of arguing for the putative morality – the best I’ve seen them manage (do let me know if they do better somewhere I haven’t seen) is to say that children do better being raised by a married couple consisting of a woman and a man. There are myriad flaws in that claim, such as the fact that even if that is true (which is disputable), it doesn’t follow that other possibilities are worse than life in an institution.
“I have not seen you post any attacks by the church on the entire issue of adoption by male gay couples”
Well, I can’t help what you’ve seen; I’ve posted lots.
I dont have a problem with gay adoption,but isnt it at least still reasonable to believe that children do better with both a mum and a dad?
Richard,
Sure, it’s at least reasonable to think that that’s possible. But then the myriad flaws come into play. Such as: 1) even if that is true, there are other possibilities that are much better than an institution (just ask Marie-Therese about that!); 2) it could be true in general or on average but not true in every case – some gay couples will be better than some straight couples, which is why adoption agencies screen people carefully; 3) Catholic agencies don’t restrict adoptions to couples, so they don’t themselves hold out for what they claim to be best.
I think 1 and 2 are pretty crucial. Even if a straight couple is in general best, a loving responsible kind single person is a billion miles better than an institution. The right question to ask about anybody who wants to adopt is what sort of job will they do. I would maintain that a loving responsible kind gay couple is a billion miles better than an institution – better in a sense that even people who feel uncomfortable about homosexuality could agree to. Everybody has to be screened, gay and straight; it’s the screening that matters, not the arbitrary prior conditions.
Richard: I’m a bit off topic, but you keep bringing up fathers. If you’re so concerned about children being raised without fathers, you might try putting the blame for that squarely where it belongs – to start with, ON MEN rather than shadowy enemy forces waved at by the label “liberalism.”
Seriously. Your insinuations that “liberalism” is somehow to blame for the so-called fatherhood crisis sounds no better informed or sensible than a bunch of white working class fellows sitting around the pub blaming this or that perceived social problem on “damned immigrants” or simply “the darkies.” The collapse of fatherhood is demographically closely tied to socioeconomic class. As a matter of documented fact, the number of fatherless families is much higher in countries where there is a growing gap between the rich and poor than it is in countries where the gap between rich and poor is holding steady or shrinking: And just to make my point super-explicit, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is neither an aim nor a consequence of “liberalism” – although flawed policies promoted by some who wear liberal party labels yet promote right-ish policies certainly haven’t helped (i.e. Blair today in the UK, Clinton to some extent during his time in office in the US).
“I dont have a problem with gay adoption,but isnt it at least still reasonable to believe that children do better with both a mum and a dad?”
But you indicate yourself that, if children do better (always? most of the time? on average?) with both a mum and a dad, this does not translate in opposition to gay adoption. I.e. suppose that it could be supported statistically that children growing up with both a mum and a dad do just about slightly better than children with two mums or two dads (and it’s going to be “slightly” at the very most since it’s intuitively obvious that not all heterosexual matches result in matrimonial paradise, nor are all gay relationships utter hell). This would mean nothing politically, since it would still be, probably, better for a kid to be raised by a responsible, relatively harmonious gay couple than by a violent, dysfunctional or abusive heterosexual one.
Unless it is argued that there is something essential in heterosexual parent-couples that gay couples lack – but it is not obvious to me what it is.
There’s one aspect in which I think gay couples would do better, on average. Homosexuality is not (and will likely never be) the default, and gays of both sexes will probably always go through some process of self-acceptance, etc. I think this makes them just a bit more understanding of anything that is not the default stance, and of the value of fighting and not letting yourself be forcibly fit into “mainstream” society’s models. So you’d get less fathers of the “stop reading those damn books and go play football!” kind, and generally less parents who try to forcibly fit their kids (boys and girls) into some kind of role-model. Not being autobiographical here: I was never forced to do football and never lacked access to reading material – but a lot of kids in my home town did, and a lot of them underperformed because of peer pressure, lack of any intellectual interest or stimulation from parents (and I don’t want to think about what budding gays went through). I’d venture a lot of them would have benefited from being raised by the gay couples I’ve come to know.
As far as the Catholic Church protests: I’m being optimistic, and would reckon they forego protesting against civil partnerships for gays because they know that’s a losing battle. The genie’s out of the bottle and it can’t be put back in. They focus on marriage because marriage has such symbolic value that they think they can hold the fort for a while. Don’t think they can in the long run.
The gap between rich and poor causes fathers to bugger of and leave their children? that is a typical liberal excuse that exonerates the dead beat dad from any responsibility for his actions,the fact that men who behave in this manner are no longer scorned by society in general shows how far things have gone. O.B.I wouldnt disagree with any of your last post by the way.
G. I would just add that as a plumber I come into contact with loads of other white working class types and it has probably been 20 years since I have heard crap spoken about darkies and immigrants!
To my eyes there is so prejudiced shite written here. G produces his twaddle about darkies and immigrants as a slander by association, not becuase they are ideas spoken by anyone in this debate. Average usenet-quality argument.
There is no evidence offered here that gay families are equally as safe for children as any other kinds. It is an ungrounded assertion.
It is a fact that SOME straight families are very dangerous for children – especially STEP children. Thirty years ago people ‘were nice’ and pretended that re-formed families were the same as other families, but the statistics for child murder give that the lie.
Similarly, we can anticipate learning in some years whether or not gay guys adopting young boys are as safe as their natural parents, as the boys grow to adolescence and adulthood.
Anecdotal evidence (from knowing and loving some) is that there is no danger to children with lesbian couples, beyond the normal personality problems and difficult relations with the rest of the family. I don’t personally know any gay male couples with children, but there must be a good few with natural children from previous marriages. Have we got any stats from those families? Have they even been identified as a population so these questions can be tested, or would statistical review be discrimination?
The fact is, male humans with female stepchildren are quite highly likely to be in dangerously sexualised and hateful relationships with them. I know of two that ended in murder in my local population, and another that ended in suicide.
Men with daughters in stable, well-adjusted families mostly deal OK with this issue, and I don’t doubt that many gays with sons would do so too. But the children of others are not protected to the same extent as one’s biological kin, and proximity is a big hazard. Gay men are often proudly indiscriminate and transient in their tastes, and many have sneered at gay marriage because they don’t want bourgeous people’s shackles. Why sould we assume no difference between gay and straight couples?
And as the article I posted a while back pointed out, political correctness blinds critical assessment by case officers. Check out Richard Webster’s stuff on Shieldfield if you don’t believe that.
Can any of you, with your ‘yuk factor’ sneers against Christians (who in general don’t give a rats arse about your personal life), produce trustworthy, non-agenda-driven studies of these issues?
And of course the argument that gay male couples are unsafe parenting choices is not being made by the churches. Churchmen child abusers are themselves the best argument that putting gay trustworthy people in charge of people they find tasty is an effective way to find out how very likely it is that many will not be trustworthy over their lifetimes.
I don’t know if the catholics are fighting this as a cover for concern for the children’s safety, or just on the basis that gay means sinful and it would be absolutely wrong to put children into a ‘corrupting’ environment. Either way, the venom displayed in word choice here does not convince me that either side has rational grounds for its aversion to the other.
Yesterday I was in contact with a person who was blissfully adopted, – by a compassionate sensitive caring and kind-hearted family. We were making comparisons vis-à-vis our young lives. By a long chalk, I arrived at the conclusion that the person in question fared remarkably better than me-fein. For starters, “Love” “security” “happiness” as opposed to my inclusive deficiency of all three was by all accounts in much abundance in this person’s young life. The person justifiably has anger towards the biological source that at the outset caused the rejection. Conversely, though, it is focussed anger. People who grew up in institutions, like me for example spend our lives “acting out” as we do not have the foggiest notion as to the source of our disarray. We send out peculiar signals about ourselves because of the warped lives we initially experienced in the institutions. Counsellors, psychotherapists, and psychiatrists have tremendous difficulties trying to comprehend the incomprehensibility, mysteriousness, enigma weirdness, oddness incongruity, absurdity, preposterousness, inaptness, inappropriateness outlandishness of our strange behaviour OUR WHOLE LIVES HAVE/ARE JUST ONE BIG PERFORMANCE. We are constantly told to “get real” and “get a life”. THEY MAY AS WELL BE TALKING TO THE BULWARK WALL FOR ALL WE UNDERSTAND. This is the legacy of INSTITUTIONAL LIFE. Children, who are desperately in need of care will grab at any chance of happiness.
I would have loved to have been adopted by a loving caring family. Children, when children do not question the politics of grown-up/relationships as they are only after all children. But they do measure when “grown up” the kindness and care that they have received and make comparisons.
ChrisPer,
‘There is no evidence offered here that gay families are equally as safe for children as any other kinds. ‘
Perfectly true, but then that specfic issue wasn’t raised until you brought it up. So I’m not sure where the ‘ungrounded assertion’ is to be found.
Certainly it is legitimate to be concerned about children being sexually abused and to suggest that it is more likely when the carer is not the biological parent. But that is not the argument put forward by the church. It may be, as you suggest, that the rather vague grounds that are presented (which seem to be little more than ‘We have been told to think this so, regardless of what we might really think, we have to think as we have been told’) are a cover for unspoken suspicions about gay adopters having a predatory agenda.
I agree that probably the ‘ideal’ situation for a child would be a loving and stable relationship involving both biological parents, but the issue of adoption necessarily means that that option is not available.
So the remaining options are:
Adoption by a hetero couple.
Adoption by a same sex couple.
Institutional care.
All three carry risks, yet only one is ruled out by the church. I think the onus to provide evidence is on them.
And the phrase ‘gay trustworthy people in charge of people they find tasty’ doesn’t sit well in the same comment that criticises ‘the venom displayed in word choice ‘.
ChrisPer,
“Churchmen child abusers” are an argument against putting children in the care of paedophiles; especially those who know that their activities will be covered up by a church fearful of losing its good reputation.
I don’t think that people, gay or straight, who are “proudly indiscriminate and transient” in their sexual lives would be judged as fit adoptive parents by a decent case worker. The poor child would be spending more time with the baby sitter whilst mummy or daddy was out humping their latest pick-up.
Honestly, ChrisPer – you do read carelessly when you get irritated.
“There is no evidence offered here that gay families are equally as safe for children as any other kinds. It is an ungrounded assertion.”
Find that assertion. Go on, find it. That’s exactly what I didn’t say, and neither did anyone else.
The stuff about practical reasons is exactly why I said screening is important.
But, ChrisPer, you know who did make the assertion you misattribute? The American Academy of Pediatrics – based on a significant amount of research conducted by family researchers and psychologists. So not only is this assertion not made by anyone here – when and where it has been made by a respected professional body, it was not ungrounded.
And my anger at Richard’s all too typical innuendo which seems to slander “those damned liberals” for whatever he doesn’t like springs from being an American surrounded by just that kind of unquestioned hate speech that is never rooted in ANY actual evidence or reasoning. While my rhetoric was no doubt over-heated, and I apologize for that, Richard went on to prove my point anyway. He willfully ignored the very first sentence in my response, in which I even capitalized the main idea that the blame for fatherless families belongs ON MEN first and foremost – not on “liberals,” whom Richard then goes on to libel again with more fact-free (and fact-ignoring) rhetoric.
One of the most ironic facts – again, widely and well documented – of the so-called red state/blue state divide in the U.S.A. is that divorce rates, fatherless families, teen pregnancies and so on are significantly HIGHER in the red states, and the specific demographic group that leads to those higher averages turns out to be the right wing religious “values voters” types. Why? Because poverty and ignorance – class issues – are at the heart of all of these social problems; unstable relationships and homes, teen pregnancy, abuse of women and children (although this crosses classes, it is more prevalent among the poor), addiction (likewise), and so on. These phenomena are all also tied to religious fundamentalism, which feeds upon hopelessness by offering false hopes and by creating the esteem-building solidarity of “us vs. them” bonds amongst believers – which is in turn tied into the oversimplified, black/white, us/them thinking that the GOP is so very good at exploiting to their own benefit, even if when their policies are to the actual detriment of their earnest supporters.
Moreover, to say that social/demographic problems have social/demographic causes is not incompatible with holding individuals responsible for their own conduct. But actually having any chance to solve such problems does require focusing on the broader perspective. For example, in this country most states have enacted very stern laws to force deadbeat parents (not all are men, although most are) to pay child support or face penalties up to and including jail time – a laudable focus on holding individuals responsible. But we’ve done absolutely nothing to fight the broader social causes of broken families and abandoned children, and in fact have enacted policies that make the problem much worse. In this, the national response to the so-called “fatherhood crisis” is much like the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror.”
As for Richard’s defense against the commonness of racism subtle and overt, perhaps his experience miraculously differs from mine here in the U.S. and Julian Baggini’s recently documented experiences in the U.K. Good for you, Richard, for somehow having avoided exposure to the incredibly common knee-jerk prejudice against immigrants and other perceived intruders/threats to solid middle-class values and privileges that just about everyone else has experienced. Too bad you somehow managed to avoid all that and still picked up the nasty habit of smearing “liberals” without a second’s thought, though.
Forgot the AAP link:
http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;109/2/339
Well responded.
I used the wrong word – I meant ungrounded ASSUMPTION, so I was wronger than evin I meant to be.
Now dead beat dads are all the fault of nasty right wing christian types G? I would suggest that this sort of tosh is why some American liberals are pillaried,todays U.S. left often reminds me of the labour party in the dark days of the 1980s(stuck in 1960s amber)just for the record I am a liberal myself,allthough Liberal neocon might be a better description because I am an avid supporter of the war!
Richard, shh! You might cause my brain to implode. At least the liberals here are equal rights liberals, and haven’t sold out the freedom of women in Islam for the sake of being multicultural. They seem to equate people that drive tractors and go to church with people who kill their daughters for dating but at least they support the daughters – unlike most of the BDS sufferers.
I’m a Universal Rights ‘liberal’, if you please
;-)
I’m a fiscal conservative Liberal.
:-))
And I have many relatives who drive tractors, and go to churches.
So, ChrisPer – why do you always devalue whatever argument you’re trying to make by resorting to cheap, unsubstantiated, jibes?
Perhaps it’s directly related to the general quality of those arguments in the first place, hmmm?
:-)
Andy,
Its probably from reading RWDB blogs and being too intellectually lazy to develop enough depth in my arguments to impress you.
My apologies for not being up to the local standards.
But it also ‘bespeaks a greater truthiness’; that I read some of OB’s more exasperated comments (and commenters) as roughly equating Christians to the Taliban. Forgive me that I associated tractor-driving with christianity; I collected the complimentary tags of ‘redneck’ and ‘KKK’ myself in the past and I thought driving tractors makes necks red.
I use sunblock myself.
Go, universal rights liberals!
Richard, you have very poor reading skills. I said that deadbeat dads (and widespread drug addiction, and abuse of women and children) are much more prevalent amongst people who live in poverty and despair. So is religious fundamentalism. These are simply demographic facts. If you have some argument or evidence questioning those facts, by all means produce it.
The BLAME for this I laid at the foot at the people who make the public policies that spread poverty and despair – who are not religious fundamentalists, although they are certainly willing to exploit them. Who are those people? The very same neocons whose policies you support with your fact-free rhetoric and slander of anyone who disagrees with you. These are indeed favored neocon tactics, so I believe you when you say you’re a neocon – although I can’t quite parse the word “liberal” you put in front of it, given what you’ve said in this thread and elsewhere.
And ChrisPer, you may be an even worse reader than Richard. I’m a blue collar kid from Ohio farm country, so you’re rhetoric is especially out of line. Most of the farmers and factory workers I knew growing up (family and friends all) were too smart to support the Republican war on the poor, the only “war” they’ve consistently won over the years. That has since changed, sadly, although the recent election indicates some return to good sense. What else has changed? The average socioeconomic status of Ohioans has plummeted over the past few decades, as farmers have gotten screwed by the agricorporations and agricorp-friendly government policies; factory workers have gotten screwed by too many Republican policies to name (and a few Democratic policies, too, such as Clinton’s push for NAFTA); and children have gotten screwed by increasingly underfunded public schools (which can’t be disconnected from the first two, since working people are the tax base).
Guess what other demographic has changed in Ohio in the past three decades? Membership in conservative fundamentalist churches has skyrocketed. Poverty and despair, ignorance and fundamentalism, these all go hand in hand. And the fundamentalist religious mind-set is part of what makes people easily exploited for their votes by the Republicans. It isn’t the farmer who works hard and goes to the local Methodist church on Sunday who’s the problem. But the farmer who goes to the local Church of Christ the Redeemer and gets fed a bunch of rhetoric about American’s moral decline, and then votes Republican for their putative “values,” is certainly not helping the situation. Such people are, in fact, shooting themselves in the foot. Hopefully they will begin to realize it soon.
This thread seems to be livening up again. I agree with G that Richard has merely made some superficial and unsupported assertions about liberalism causing familial crisis, which can legitimately be compared with saloon bar bigotry. And that he has poor reading skills.
As for associating people who drive tractors with religious fanatics, I tend to associate them with the plowman tradition of complaint about, and contrast to, epicene clergy. I appreciate that this might not be the situation in the states, but agricultural workers are not noted for their piety in my neck of the woods. (Of course, they still make a good show at Harvest Festival, but that is a different matter. Hell, even I show up for that.) They also do a spectacular Uphellya, even roping in the clergy for some pagan revels;
http://www.dipsticksresearch.com/cms/data/Tar%20Barrels%20Large.jpeg
Brilliant pic, Don! Unfortunately, not too many farmers in Ohio participate in semi-pagan rites – unless you count Christmas and Easter, which arguably should be counted given their origins.
And for the record, I hate going back over my prior comments and finding my own type-o’s. Gah!
:-)
G
G. you accuse me of poor reading of your posts and then go on to blame nasty right wing christians for dead beat dads again!As far as I am concerned a dead beat dad is responsible for his behavior,not the goverment,poverty,racism,the G.O.P.drug adiction,agro buisness,or even the pope!
Don how does my point that a more liberal society acepting behavior that would have been scorned 30 years ago make me a saloon bar bigot?(shouldnt that be public bar bigot because G.allready labeled me a white working class bigot?).
Richard,
Fair question. I felt that G’s comment was based on your;
‘Not everything about this tide of liberalism is so great!aprox half of the children are growing up without daddies.’
which essentially reduced a complex social issue to simplistic blame placing on a group to which you have an antipathy. ‘It’s all the fault of the ‘x’.’
So it wasn’t your point, but how you presented it which I felt justified the comparison.
I’m sure you can make a substantial case, but you didn’t choose to do so.
The behaviors that you use for comparison dont hold water,predudice against gays,working women ect were always wrong!dead beat dads were scorned but now they are not,some things are just wrong in my opinion and d.b.d.s are one of them!my father would not have been capable of sitting my brother and myself down to tell us that he was leaving home to live with another woman and I doubt any of my friends dads could have either,all I was saying is this change has come about in a relativly short period of time and is a frightening trend.I am sorry if my posts dont reach the lofty levels you expect as I have said before I am a plumber not a p.h.d.
G.You make and have made some very fair points but you seem unable to acept that Liberal ideas(although well meaning)can sometimes lead to disaster,I also think you take people like Coulter and Limbaugh a bit to seriously,after they are just entertainers! the left to a large extent seems to have ceded the moral arguments to the right in the U.S.even on isues like the death penalty and that gives the amunition to the likes of Coulter and co to paint them as godless amoral liberals.
What exactly are these liberal ideas that sometimes lead to disaster, and how do they do so? If you don’t fill that sort of claim in, I can’t even begin to disagree or agree with you. And not incidentally, that sort of vague insinuation – saying something negative without actually saying anything concrete enough to oppose – is exactly the way in which your arguments remind me of the right wing entertainers – all flash, no substance.
But certainly I will concede that the American left as a political movement has failed. It has not only ceded moral arguments to the right, it has slowly shifted to become more like the right on exactly the points where it once occupied the moral high ground (such as the death penalty). But to that extent, THOSE PEOPLE AREN’T IN FACT LIBERALS AT ALL! They have abandoned the very liberal ideas and ideals which you were previously saying were the problem – and now you’re saying that the problem is that they’ve abandoned those ideals?
The shifting terms of your arguments are very frustrating. “Liberal ideas” are not the same thing as “ideas that some people who call themselves ‘liberals’ appear to have these days.” For cryin’ out loud, Joe Lieberman still claims membership in the Democratic party even though he’s become a party-line Republican voter on almost every single issue! You can’t take someone’s self-labeling so uncritically.
Let me put it another way: If “liberalism” is just whatever people who call themselves “liberals” believe, then there are in fact no liberal ideals, no core liberal values – because the people who call themselves “liberal” at any given time, and especially over time, don’t all agree on everything. And the same sentence with the word “conservative” plugged in for “liberal” would be just as true. Or rather, just as false – because there are in fact some widely-accepted core ideas and ideals associated with liberal and conservative political outlooks: Shucks, there are whole rows of the library full of books laying them out and arguing over the details. You’ll frequently read people talking about those core liberal ideas and ideals right here at B&W, such as the human rights comments in the thread above. To say the American left as a political movement has ceded moral arguments to the conservatives is simply to say that they have become more conservative – and so obviously you can’t criticize them for being liberals on those points!
Even more confusing to me is your claim that the left ceding the moral arguments to the right – that is, agreeing with the right’s position – somehow counts as ammunition for right-wingers to portray them as godless amoral liberals. Admittedly, I don’t expect people like Coulter and Limbaugh to make a lot of sense, but this seems too illogical even for them: “I’ve been attacking you for holding what I say is the wrong position. But now that you’ve changed your mind and adopted the position I think is right, I’ll attack you for agreeing with me!” Huh?
You’ve now so confused me that I think I’m going to go back to that point where I was giving up on this discussion. Besides, this thread has dragged on for a while and only you and I are paying attention anymore. We can clash some other time – perhaps even on a thread where we won’t be so wildly off-topic.
Regards,
G
Sorry I probably wasnt clear in my last post,The left have in my opinion given up on isues that they should be fighting,I.e.the death penalty and is not even engaging other moral arguments(like the one we have been having)that should be clasic liberal isues!as for examples of liberal ideas gone bad how about nationalisation,unilateral disarmament and many ill thought out wellfare programs that have led to outrages like wellfare brood mares or many generations of the same family being wellfare dependent.I think liberals should be honest enough to admit that the answers do not all belong to us.
Lets agree to compromise and blame it on the jews?
A few minor interjections:
I. Divorce and separation rates are not necessarily correlated to deadbeat dadness. Decry an overly divorce-tolerant culture if you will, but deadbeat dads are crap whether they fuck off with Pam from the supermarket or stay home and piss the family income up the wall while wathing Wheel of Fortune (a mental image which could be over-literally interpreted).
II. Correlation does not equal causation. Averaged out, divorce rates in the US are highest in red states; they are highest in the states which receive the greatest proportions of Federal funding; they are highest in the states with the lowest education levels; and they are highest in the most religious states. These are correlations, maybe more, maybe less. These correlations may support the thesis that the issue is linked to poverty in some way, but this is far from clear-cut. They certainly constitute a pretty strong indicator that liberalism is not primarily to blame, but again this is no more than an indication. Both Richard and G seem to be advancing causative arguments based on correlation which need a LOT more support.
III. I seriously doubt that deadbeat dadness has increased that much – social reports, novels, personal accounts etc. show plenty of evidence for the phenomenon in the past (in which contexts it was usually associated with poverty, though that may be a construct of data collection). It might not have ended in abandonment of the family so often as now but see point I. I suspect the recency illusion is at play here.
Someone else is reading? Okay, then, one more shot.
Richard: No, you weren’t clear – but I seem to have understood your general thrust well enough. You really did just blame liberals for not being real liberals, which is kind of a complete (and confusing) reversal from all the vague slanders associated with the word “liberal” you were issuing previously. You’re right. It must just be the darned Jews. ;-)
Outeast: I agree that there is a lot of this that is based on correlations rather than causes. I tried to make an argument that the connection is plausible beyond mere correlation – but let’s face it, when you’re talking about social problems, causation is ALWAYS ELUSIVE. However, it seems like a very sound public policy strategy to notice what is consistently correlated with what and trying to change the thing that is (1) bad in itself, like poverty; and (2) is ALWAYS correlated with a bunch of bad stuff we’d rather have less of (abandoned children, violence, drug addiction, etc.).
And you may very well be right on the recency illusion: This is the sort of thing that should have solid statistical /demographic grounding, but I can’t recall ever having seen it. Then again, I’m not a policy wonk, so that’s not necessarily the kind of stuff that I’d run across without extensive and specific research.
Apparently I spoke too soon. It looks like at least some elements of that argument I made connecting correlation and cause in these complex interrelated social matters has empirical support. OB links to this study today connecting poverty/insecurity with religiosity. (The connection between a certain kind of religiosity and support for Rethuglicans is already well-established, I trust?)
Yeah – trying to change the thing that is bad in itself and always correlated with bad stuff. But where it gets tricky and depressing is when the thing is not bad in itself – which may be what Richard had in mind.
There is a nasty bullet to bite: freedom is an inherent good, we all like to have it, but, freedom to waltz off and leave one’s children to starve and/or feel abandoned is another matter. It’s still an inherent good of a kind for the adult who seizes it – but it has horrible consequences.
It’s the biggest crunch in human life, probably – commitments that limit one’s freedom. And not even just human life – first-time primate mothers often seem quite dismayed at their sudden burden, and sometimes they abandon it, or treat it harshly.
So maybe Richard had in mind the thought that freedom is a value, especially to liberals (that being what the word means, after all), but making freedom a value can foster lack of responsibility. (It doesn’t have to – it’s just that it can.)
I hate like poison saying that, because I value freedom more than almost anything else. But I do think it’s true.
You as ever say it much more eloquently than I ever could, that is exacly what I was driving at thanks O.B.
Yeah, OB. I agree, at least in part. That’s why when Richard brought up moral decline, the first thing I thought of was that pesky ‘sense of entitlement’ thing: The all rights/no responsibilities, all freedoms/ no duties mind-set is certainly a major feature of the modern American psyche. But I’m not sure how much that is “liberal” so much as “libertarian” – or should I say, Libertarian with a capital “L,” as in the political party/movement.
When ‘liberty’ comes to mean (in someone’s view) “I’m free to do anything I want and you’re free to piss off and die for all I care,” this takes one element of the liberal conception of society and magnifies it out of all proportion, at the expense of every other core liberal ideal. That’s Ayn Rand’s “I got mine so screw you!” vision of liberty, free market fundamentalism run rampant to cover every aspect of public life. It certainly bears little resemblance to Locke’s or Mill’s or Rawls’ any other coherent thinker’s notion of liberty.
And it hardly needs be pointed out that this is the only notion of liberty that’s wholeheartedly endorsed by this country’s Republican (let us not call them conservative, since the are not) political agenda: e.g. complete deregulation of industry, undermining or removing environmental protection regulations, privatization or elimination of core infrastructure and social services, etc. So it seems odd to label such a view of freedom as a liberal idea or ideal at all.
Conceptually, though, I agree. Emphasizing the importance of individual liberty probably does allow people a sort of “emotional license” to rationalize away their responsibilities. This is especially true when the individual aspect of liberty is over-emphasized, or when liberty is taken only negatively (You’re not the boss of me!) rather than positively. But I don’t think that there’s a particularly nasty bullet to bite anywhere in this, when all is said and done. People can rationalize and pseudo-justify and otherwise twist any damned idea – true or false, noble or base – to endorse whatever they happen to want to do at the moment. That doesn’t make the idea bad, it makes the people who twist it bad. Looking at liberty in a hyper-individualistic, purely negative way that ignores the liberty of others is wrong-headed and unjustifiable, and it does not indicate that there’s some problem with the concept of liberty itself.
As you point out, “making freedom a value can foster lack of responsibility. (It doesn’t have to – it’s just that it can.)” Well, possibly. But why doesn’t it have to, and how does it do so when it does? It seems as if the only sense in which valuing freedom “fosters” irresponsibility is that people who choose to ignore their responsibilities can mis-use the language of freedom as a thin sort of excuse. When that happens, where does the fault lie? With the value placed on freedom, or with the person who twists the concept of freedom to justify their disavowal of responsibility? The latter, surely.
G,
Yeh, I certainly had libertarianism in mind as one variant of the idea, along with the fact that it’s much more a right-wing fetish than a left-wing one.
But…no nasty bullet…Well, I think there is. Just for one thing I think it’s in all of us – we recognize that bullet. We know freedom and responsibility (along with compassion, duty, care, generosity, kindness, altruism, all sorts of things) are in tension inside us all the time – don’t we? We’d rather run off outside and leave the dishes for someone else to wash. The fact that we stay in and wash the dishes doesn’t make running off less desirable.
“But why doesn’t it have to, and how does it do so when it does?”
Interesting question. A lot of reasons, I think. Mixes of morality or conscience, and emotions. It doesn’t because we know we shouldn’t let it, and because we love X and don’t want to harm her or him or it (it can be an it – a garden, the environment, global peace).
But I think it’s never because we don’t think freedom is a value, it’s because we give it up for other values. That’s the bullet. It’s just life, of course; it’s one of the first things we learn; but dang, it’s a bullet.
Maybe I do see this oddly – I’m not sure. There’s a perhaps relevant bit of Simon Blackburn’s Ruling Passions that brought me up short – about the possibility of thinking too much or too coldly and logically, I think: he said something to the effect that if we don’t spend time with X out of love but rather because we’ve reasoned ourselves into it, that’s all wrong. But I think that’s, erm, not right. It is perfectly possible to love a spouse and still never do one’s share of the domestic duties; it happens all the time; and the problem is not or not only a failure of love, it’s a failure of reasoning too. But that thought apparently didn’t even occur to SB, which surprised me rather – it seems so obvious to me. But then…[whispers] I’m a woman.
Interesting subject, isn’t it. I’m glad you set it off, Richard! Despite bumpy start.
[after a pause for some deputy editorial work]
That’s unclear. I knew why I jumped from spending time to domestic duties, but I didn’t make it clear.
It’s p. 21:
“…we often do not want ethics to intrude into practical living…because it introduces ‘one thought too many’. In a personal relationship, for example with one’s partner or children, the last thing one wants it that people are acting with an eye to behaving well, or out of a sense of duty…A partner who realizes that the other is meeting them not because they want to, but out of a sense of duty, thereby recognizes that the relationship is lost.”
Yes, but meeting isn’t the only issue; there are also things like doing one’s share of the domestic work, and, as I said, it is (sadly) perfectly possible to love someone and still think the domestic work is her problem; it is precisely a sense of duty that can correct that blind spot.
So he’s right about meeting, but not right (in my view) about ethics in relationships in general. Relationships and commitments require doing things we don’t want to do (that of course is why I live on top of a flagpole several hundred miles north of Yellowknife); very often it requires a sense of duty to make us do things we don’t want to do. Love is necessary but not always sufficient.
Hmm. I was still half in the mode of responding to Richard’s earlier (but since left behind) liberal-bashing, so I missed the tenor of your contribution, OB. I think I see what you meant, now.
Still – the person who embraces freedom and shrugs off responsibility is valuing something that isn’t quite liberty in the political philosophy sense, the one I value. That person is privileging a shiny, easy, “do whatever I want” cheap knock-off of genuine liberty. Genuine liberty is ALWAYS attached to a caveat: it is always “liberty consistent with the liberty of others” – rather than, say, “liberty for me and you can do the dishes, honey.”
There can be real trade-offs as well, situations where freedom clashes with some other genuine good. But a surprising number apparent clashes dissolve when liberty is considered a little more carefully and fully – with more thought given to the liberty of others as it is affected by one’s choices. But maybe this is just another way of talking about that tension to which you refer. There’s the freedom we want, and then there’s the freedom we rightly ought to have when we think about it more carefully. Too often, it is easy to avoid thinking carefully and act with the freedom we want.
(Aside: This might be a useful way to characterized the psychology of privilege – white privilege, male privilege, class privilege, any privilege: The privileged person not only fails to think about how their liberty constrains the liberty of others, but the very notion that there is even something to think about simply does not occur to them because they’ve never experienced that sort of constraint. That’s why privilege is so sneakily invisible to the privileged, but generally much more obvious to those over whom they exercise privilege. Hmmm…)
Generally, I think perhaps that I don’t see these tensions one finds everywhere to be negatives because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how constraints and limitations are inherently a part of what makes anything – a concept, a value, a meaning, an object, a game, an organism – what it is. Unconstrained individual liberty quickly becomes incoherent (and destructive) in practice because everyone’s desires to do this or that come into conflict with the desires of others. Liberty only makes sense intellectually (and can only happen practically) when liberty for any individual is balanced by/consistent with the liberty of others. If a “tension” is absolutely necessary for something of genuine value to exist as such, then that tension can’t be a negative.
But I guess your point is that it can still FEEL like a real drag to have to do your fair share of the housework (or whatever happens to be the constraint of the moment). And in that, I certainly agree.
G. I think you mean libertine not libertarian,liibertarians believe in personal responsibility in all matters,their ideas tend to cross party lines like ending the stupid drug war is usualy an argument of the left, smaller goverment you find on the right,there are numerous other examples as well. O.B.is spot on with the nasty bullet argument, it is just the reasons that large numbers of men refuse to bite it that we are seeking!
I think George has put his finger on the nub of it – and his formulation does elimanate the bullet OB identifies. It’s that pesky liberal universalism again: if we value freedom for everyone we enter into a contract that makes the responsibilities contingent upon the exercise of freedom an integral part therof.
As eminent philosopher Pratchett puts it, the freedom to take the consequences is critical to any meaningful definition of freedom to the extent that without it no other freedom can have value.
G, yes to all that – especially the psychology of privilege part, and the always thinking about constraints and limitations part, and the point being what it still feels like.
“The fact is, male humans with female stepchildren are quite highly likely to be in dangerously sexualised and hateful relationships with them. I know of two that ended in murder in my local population, and another that ended in suicide”.
ChrisPer
“I go along with you on this – one hundred per cent. Step Fathers can be the most cruellest people on this earth. I have personal experience of same”.
Your point on Libertarianism (as a set of ideals) is well taken, Richard. Unfortunately, the actual self-declared Libertarians I have met in the face-to-face world (rather than in books about political philosophy) have almost all been the selfish Randian types – every one a self-styled John Galt in his own imagination.
The libertarian principles you point to are often good ones, and certainly they lead to more reasonable positions on personal matters like sex and drugs than the usual conservative nonsense. Unfortunately, most actual libertarians in practice emphasize their own personal freedoms much more than their personal responsibilities. Hypocritically, they still feel free to criticize others for failing to take personal responsibility for things they perceive to be the others’ own fault – like poverty.
Interestingly, every hard-core Libertarian but one that I’ve met has been a man, and all have been white. Most of those men I believe to be quite capable of abandoning their children at the drop of a hat, in pursuit of their precious “personal freedom.” That’s a character judgment, of course, and I could be wrong. But there’s also objective evidence of that character: There is a very high proportion of Libertarians amongst the Men’s Rights movement – the basic principles of which seem to be (1) that men have the right not to be burdened with responsibility for children unless they want it, even if they happen to be the biological fathers of said children, and (2) if men decide to take responsibility for children at all, they deserve absolute control over their children’s lives (whatever that bitch mother happens to think about it). Of course, that’s not how they word their principles: But if you follow what they actually do and say, that’s the upshot.
All of which makes me think that there’s a very strong connection between real-world Libertarians (not libertarian philosophy, but libertarian practice) and the psychology of privilege I was talking about above…
G.I would ask you to take a look at one of the more popular libertarian web sites,boortz.com for instance,he is a real true blue right wing blowhard but I would say he probably represents libertarian thinking today,I do not see the sort of stuf you describe!although I do understand the point you make about the types drawn to that particular brand of politics.I think rand made a very fair point re the atlas shrugged theory,I may not agree with it but there is a lot of truth in the theory.
Good stuff, G.
Pauline Borsook’s Cyberselfish is one interesting look at the whole thing. Written at the height of the bubble though; probably less relevant now. Or maybe not.
Ditto good stuff, I think you point out the main flaw in libertarian thinking! I think the most powerfull arguments they make is that goverment action in problem solving tends to make things worse,take the 40 year war on drugs for example all it has given us for the billions spent is full prisons parts of cities turned into war zones where young black men are shooting each other over crack dealing rights,heroin dealers as common as piza delivery men and for what? after 40 years we still have the same amount of our population adicted to drugs as we did at the start of this insanity.
Not much to contribute save agreement with the last few posts. The libertarian argument makes a lot of sense in the terms in which Richard frames it, but to get an idea of how it often transpires in reality then you only need to check out some of the responses to the New Orleans disaster to see where it can lead.
Of course, libertarians (or anyone else) who criticizes the war on drugs as a failure and as bad policy to begin with is essentially right. But libertarians then tend to leap from individual examples of bad government policies to completely unwarranted conclusions like (1) government itself is bad and must necessarily always fail to solve or help with social problems, and so must be absolutely minimized in every possible way; and (2) somehow the free market is always magically better than the government (or any other entity or possible policy) at solving social problems.
I just think the drug war is a bad policy, was always a bad policy, and was begun out of sheer historical contingency more than with any sort of rational goals. There was a large, bureaucratic, entrenched law enforcement apparatus left over from the foolishness of Prohibition that was left fighting to establish reasons for existing after the repeal.
Probably the one thing libertarians are right about, illustrated by Prohibition and the subsequent drug war as it evolved, is that any power relegated to the government tends to expand and is difficult to take away – and therefore caution should always be exercised handing power to governments. But it might make sense to try institutional reforms that oppose that tendency, rather than vastly oversimplifying the real issues and seeking to “make government small enough to drown in a bathtub” as Grover Norquist says. Is our current government big enough to destabilize whole regions but somehow still too small to prevent one city from drowning? No. It’s not about the size of the government, it’s about the accountability of those who run it – about checks and balances, and the failures thereof.
Libertarians are good about pointing out the failures of governments, not as good about pointing out the individual responsibility of policy makers (and voters for that matter) for the failures of government, and are absolute shite about suggesting reasonable, workable solutions to any given problem.
G depends on which strain you talk about libertarians are not monolithic,Hary Brown takes the pure Rand line of no goverment other than defence or law enforcement,Boortz on the other hand argues for 5% reduction over each 4 year cycle and also does offer soloutions to problems i.e.he is happy to spent tax payer money to treat drug adicts instead of the drug war. Don I was aware that I picked the most glaring example of goverment insanity but there are many others,I agree in general terms that libertarianism is over simplistic but that dosnt mean that many of their ideas have a lot of merrit.
I’ll give you that, Richard. I was most definitely (and intentionally) speaking in general terms. Specific libertarians on specific issues can make substantial positive contributions to public debate, and generally just have good ideas: But I do think that the hyper-individualistic libertarian way of looking at the world has a very strong tendency to embrace rather than oppose the blindness of privilege I’ve been talking about. Just as, on the flip side, more communitarian ways of thinking can be too quick to gloss over important individual differences and individual rights. (There’s a dynamic tension that doesn’t go away!)
Even in areas where the relevance of privilege may not be immediately obvious, it is still very much an exception rather than the rule for a libertarian either (1) recognize social causes in any sensible way, (2) impose the same “holding people personally responsible for their actions” judgments on those with power that they do those without, or (3) offer plausible solutions to any given government failure they criticize. Some libertarians do the opposite at least some of the time – but when they do, they seem to be bucking a very strong trend. After all, that lunatic Harry Browne, and the even loonier Lyndon Larouche before him – neither of whom I’ve ever heard say anything sensible – were official Libertarian Party candidates for President. Boortz merely has a radio show – the popularity of which depends at least partly on listeners NOT agreeing with him much of the time. This (as well as my real-life and online encounters with libertarians) leads me to believe that the Randian-type nutjobs are more representative of libertarians generally than the often-thoughtful Boortz is – sadly.
You are probably right about the wack jobs being the majority,but Boortz seems quite efective at getting his strains ideas into the mainstream,for example he has recently co written a book on sensible and possible tax reform that is gaining widespread support.