>Getting back to stereotypes, MrK, I wish you were as sensitive to cases where "your guys" employ them.<
A good point. Nevertheless to my way of thinking the matter is philosophical, particularly where morality is concerned. The liberal position seems to be that there are no moral absolutes and that therefore morality is ultimately developed in a society via consensus. The religious Christian conservative position is that morality and the rights of man are both handed down by God and that they are inalienable. The liberal position allows and often even champions a woman's right to practically give birth to her nearly full term child, puncturing a hole in the base of its skull, and sucking out its brain, discarding the remains into the trash. The religious conservative position no doubt is fraught with problems of interpretation of God's will, and these have allowed grievous ills, the wounds of which are yet experienced by many in our republic. Nevertheless, even these misinterpretations have their limits. I hardly think one will find a religious conservative who will go so far as to suggest there exists no moral ramifications to the infanticide that is abortion, let alone the clear infanticide that is partial birth abortion; and even where interpretations have caused ills, such as the support of slavery, it was from the prodding of religious fanatics themselves that these ills were corrected. Slavery, for example, was eventually abolished because of men like John Brown and others who hurled their lives against the established depravity of American slavery (the roots of which were not based on religion, despite what liberals have attempted to claim) because of an assurance that it contradicted the moral order of God, and these men pointed to reasoned interpretation of the Bible to validate their moral positions. Even the Southern Baptists, whose denomination essentially formed over the issue of slavery, have come to recognize their error, this, as a result of bending to these reasoned interpretations.
While no doubt conservatives employ stereotypes against liberals, I find it of no consequence when the manifestation of mainstream American liberalism itself contradicts the existence of my moral order. It is no fringe element of liberalism that champions infanticide. It is currently American law. It is no fringe element of liberalism that champions the raising of homosexuality to equality with the grand human archetype that is heterosexuality. There are states today that are now considering doing just this. It is no fringe element of liberalism that desires to force Americans whose moral sensibilities require an utter rejection of homosexuality, to support it. This is precisely the thing for which mainstream liberalism strives. It is no fringe element of liberalism that champions making euthanasia American law. The far reaching implications of these things are harrowing, and while Hofstadter and others may think we who recognize them as destructive forces are paranoid, he merely admits by use of his veiled ad hominem that he has no arguments. The things mentioned above are not the products of the stereotypical liberal. They are doctrines of mainstream liberalism, doctrines that threaten my moral legacy.
>The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a 'vast' or 'gigantic' conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms--he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization.
- Hofstadter <
In truth, if one desires to apply this lunacy to religious Christian conservatives, one merely betrays a gross ignorance of these people. Speaking as a Christian conservative, I of course believe there is a conspiracy against Decency, Honor, Integrity, and each time I hear of a child being dissolved to death, or being butchered by a so-called doctor, each time I hear of an entire nation winking at presidential adultery and flagrant lying, I realize the evil is so great as to be the concoction of no mere man. I do not posit the apocalyptic destruction of our political and social systems. I claim these systems are already largely destroyed and that, as with the proverbial frog in the pot, we are unwittingly being cooked. We are legislating our system to death so that our Constitution is increasingly but a sham. The societal values that allowed dozens of families to sleep at night without fear of harm on the Mall of Washington, D.C. are largely destroyed. We have already lost basic trust in one another, and too many of us, though we will perhaps not admit it, live in fear and in distrust even of our neighbors. I actually have books from my grandmother's day describing the adventures of six and eight year old girls roaming the streets of New York City, going to museums and zoos, this, without adult supervision, trusting in society's social and moral infrastructure to protect them. They knew that in the event they became lost, they merely needed ask a policeman or adult for assistance. Indeed, even I grew up with a semblance of trust in our basic moral infrastructure. This infrastructure is now destroyed, and what little morality is left is but a remnant from our past, reinforced primarily not by a general demand by society that each of its members adhere to a basic standard of decency, but only by laws, thousands and thousands of laws, any number of which can be circumvented by the clever predator-just as illustrated to us by O.J. and our noble President.
Were I to have a young daughter working in the White House, I would not trust the president (!) to treat her honorably, and I would not trust you or the whole country to demand retribution in the event the president treated her dishonorably. Despite the politics of the thing, the Lewinsky matter has further corrupted the basic trust between members of the American family. I personally distrust, now further, the basic moral infrastructure of our country, and am increasingly sensing the need to prepare myself for the defense of my own family, my own values and beliefs. To preserve my moral heritage, I literally must (and have) train my children to reject the prevalent moral position of their own country and their own President, thereby breeding within them a distrust of the basic moral constitution of their countrymen. There is not the slightest bit of paranoia here. Sober reality requires I acknowledge the trash all around me, and decency requires that I take measures to sweep it away. |
