On the “liberal” / classical liberal divide, this much can be said: the more things change, the more they stay the same:
Consequently the political design of Tory measures was uniformly to increase the coercive power of the government over the individual and enlarge its range of action. The design of Whig measures, and subsequently Liberal measures, was uniformly to decrease the government’s coercive power and to reduce its range of action. This must be kept clearly in mind, for it is the fundamental distinction between Toryism in practice and Liberalism in practice. It furnishes the one and only test by which to determine whether a specific political measure should be classified as Tory or Liberal. No matter what political label the measure bears; no matter whether its direct object may be desirable or undesirable; its mark of identification is found only by addressing these questions to it: Does this measure tend to diminish or to increase the government’s coercive power over the individual? Does it tend to narrow the range of the government’s coercive power, or to widen it? Does it tend to diminish compulsory cooperation or to increase it? Does it tend to enlarge the area of conduct in which the individual is free to do as he pleases, or does it enlarge the area in which he must do as governmental agents please? If these questions can be answered by the one affirmative, then the measure is a Liberal measure, properly so called; and if by the other, it is a Tory measure; and it must be repeated that neither the desirability per se of the immediate end which the measure is designed to serve, nor its lack of desirability, has any bearing whatever on this decision.
[emphasis mine — which I hope echoes my primary complaint against McCain, who was and is a statist]
Discuss.
(h/t Hadlowe)
Well, crap, I don’t know that there is much more to say. Yes!
I honestly think (as I said somewhere else) that THIS is an idea with traction. That our government has overstepped. That’s why it’s best to focus on fringe issues to make conservatives look bad. Double-up on the “militia” stories. Get Jeneane out there to talk about white hate and limbic systems.
Presented with a choice between a statist and a statist to succeed a statist, the voters voted for the statist. I denounce myself as a hater, in advance.
I propose a Janeane vs Janine wrestling contest. Let’s settle this fairly.
That would say, ironically in the case of the current administration, that the Torys (conservative party in Britain) are for larger government. So that makes Obama a conservative?? Hardly.
I think that I’m not getting it. Or that the current labeling structure is getting in my way today, for some reason.
You can see it all in the fight over the Corn Laws in Britain the early and mid-1800s — various forms of price-fixing and protectionist legislation designed to interfere with the free market.
The same battle was fought in post-Napoleonic France in the mid-1800s, between the faction that sat on the left side and the one on the right side of the National Assembly. The Left and the Right fought over who would get the special benefits that flow from governmental power and manipulation of markets.
It was the same debate that, shortly thereafter, became the basis for the Civil War in the US — only here, it was framed in terms of cotton tariffs and import restrictions on manufactured goods, along with massive subsidies to Northern industry, construction and banking that Lincoln promoted. The South was (somewhat) more free-market, and the North was not. War ensued.
After the war, the Progressives (ostensibly built on the idea of a re-organization of society along scientific principles, including eugenics) eventually took over Tory methods, and employed them to achieve Labour ends. It’s why the Left is still all about the social engineering and abortion (i.e., eugenics), even though the “science” on which these crusader ideas were originally based have long since been debunked.
Free-marketers had a brief home in the Republican Party during FDR. And, in today’s age of multi-trillion-dollar deficits, it seems to have revived the free-market-friendly segment among conservatives, who seemed to be asleep for the last 8 years, hence McCain’s nomination. But we have always been the red-headed step-children of both parties.
I’m worried about the dearth of discussion here lately. Perhaps OUTLAWISM has lost to pragmatic GOP boosterism, after all.
Or maybe it’s just that this site is no longer interesting. In which case, I apologize.
Given that all politics are in the end local, and given that all politics — or minimization thereof, in the case of classical liberalism — should serve end results that themselves serve liberty, what should we all the smoke and noise that is progressivism?
I typically label it — by way of its rhetorical effect — the lie, and by way of it’s practical effect, it’s clearly envy, theft,, and power-seeking but among those labels “lie” goes discarded into the name-calling file, and envy and theft are merely by now standardized procedure.
Progressivism lives by way of denying reality. What intellectual (and perhaps spiritual) construct starves it of oxygen? Must it always learn — if it ever does — only when systems finally collapse?
Jeff,
I cringe every time I wander into a thread and see the intoxicated astrobeefcake getting into it with several others. When that is not present, the discussion does seem to happen, and is of better quality.
What you have quoted is a very good “pocket guide” to viewing legislation. As a follow-up, I would ask someone in favor of expanding the reach and coercive power of the government a simple “why?” The answer could prove either enlightening or amusing or (lately) tragi-comic…
I’d run on a platform of anarchy, but I’ve come to see that the majority craves abuse. We had a guy who wanted to shred the First Amendment running against a guy who wanted to change everything. It’s their 15 minutes of fame. They want to take your money and spend it on stuff you dan’t want but they’re asking for your vote and you can be on their side.
I think the guy who was choked to death by his pet python had better odds. It didn’t turn out well, but it might have. This last election, not so much.
I’m worried about the dearth of discussion here lately.
Dude. We’re all in the Charles/Glenn thread mourning the loss of Charles’s erstwhile partnership with the starboard side.
And taking cheap shots at Charles from time to time, or it wouldn’t be the Internet.
Also, it’s Friday, and some segments of the country might be enjoying a fine day.
Either that or they’re watching the Susan Boyle video again. Can’t get enough of that.
Sorry, Jeff. Been a busier Friday than I’d hoped. I loved that essay — Jonah linked to it the other day. I sent the text of it to my girlfriend, who is gradually awakening politically, and she couldn’t believe it was written 75 years ago.
Which is to say, I have nothing substantive to add at this time. I do have Pens-Flyers tix, though.
I’ve been spending my time working and digging into Lego Mindstorms.
Mostly the latter, of course.
Busy day, but I would think that McCain would be more like one of George III’s Whig “King’s Friends” than a Tory.
’m worried about the dearth of discussion here lately. Perhaps OUTLAWISM has lost to pragmatic GOP boosterism, after all.
In regards to THIS thread, I simply didn’t see anything to debate/discuss.
Plus, it it (finally) beautiful here in Michigan. It has been a LOONG winter. 67 degrees and sunny.
And while I’m stealing gratuitous links from The Corner, might as well mention that maybe Russian women are better at some things.
The historical progression Nock presented in that essay, Whig to Liberal to Statist suggests to me that the liberals were victims of their own success. Liberalism leads to affluence, affluence leads to a desire to maintain the status quo, that desire invites statist intrusions under the guise of protection, statist intrusions stifle creative forces that generate the affluence resulting in decline.
I don’t know that the cycle is alterable, human nature and whatnot.
Oh, and thanks for the hat tip. Is a curtsy the proper response?
Same here 68 and beautiful. There is going to be a local Tea Party tomorrow. State AG and our former conservative congressman as speakers.
Today is getting things ready to put the plants out once I can count on no frost. Not yet as weather channel shows several days upcoming with lows of 35. Too close to freezing still.
LTC:
Well, you’re obviously talking about me because I don’t see any other beefcake around here, but I don’t resent it. I’m not sure how relevant the “astro” is though. I haven’t been skydiving in awhile.
I do appreciate the insight vis the tory vs whig division, and the sneaky appropriation of the term “liberal” by the former. Politics is a source of unending irony. But I really would like to see some sort of grudge match between Jeanine Garafalo and Janine Turner, even if it’s only on the intellectual level. Call me Barbar.
Spring fever. In those parts of the country where spring has actually, like, arrived.
It is the weather.
Plus I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to know who Nock is.
Sh.
“No matter what political label the measure bears; no matter whether its direct object may be desirable or undesirable; its mark of identification is found only by addressing these questions to it: Does this measure tend to diminish or to increase the government’s coercive power over the individual? Does it tend to narrow the range of the government’s coercive power, or to widen it? Does it tend to diminish compulsory cooperation or to increase it? Does it tend to enlarge the area of conduct in which the individual is free to do as he pleases, or does it enlarge the area in which he must do as governmental agents please? If these questions can be answered by the one affirmative, then the measure is a Liberal measure, properly so called; and if by the other, it is a Tory measure;”
Why, just today, we get this:
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/04/steve_schmidts_speech_the_full_text.php
“[I]t cannot be argued that marriage between people of the same sex is un-American or threatens the rights of others. On the contrary, it seems to me that denying two consenting adults of the same sex the right to form a lawful union that is protected and respected by the state denies them two of the most basic natural rights affirmed in the preamble of our Declaration of Independence – liberty, and the pursuit of happiness….
“In closing, I’ll return to our national creed, what Lincoln called the inestimable jewel of American history, and offer my respect for and urge my fellow Republicans to respect every human being’s rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness as much as they cherish their own.
Can you picture meya in real life? She is that neighbor at the dinner party that everyone rolls their eyes at when she starts babbling during the dead animal course.
my brain has been eated.
Robert Higgs suggested something similar during his appearance on C-Span’s In Depth program a couple of weeks ago. Said he, “Don’t just stand there, undo something.”
Time and again, I’ve pointed out to liberals that there is no mainstream Right-wing in American politics. American conservativism is informed by a Whig sensibility, not a Tory one.
“[I]t cannot be argued that marriage between people of the same sex is un-American or threatens the rights of others.
It also cannot be argued that gay marriage, or any kind of marriage, is under any circumstances under the purview of the federal freaking government.
Unless, of course, you are a lying, pig-ignorant fascist.
Which, of course, you are.
sad day in the republic when the feds are deciding what kind of marriage certs can be bestowed to the population
no the passing of the 14th Amendment set the policy of the states as to citizenship. after ratify this amendment, the feds having corrected a flaw in the constitution should have reverted to it’s original constitutionally sanction role.
“no the passing of the 14th Amendment set the policy of the states as to citizenship.”
Yes the first sentence does do that. There are others….
reparations assholes it is unconstitutional
Okay, I’ll try some serious discussion.
The quoted text seems to be a good general guide to the two predominant types of political thought. I’m curious though, does Nock speak to the baseline of this analysis though?
For instance, the military and the police, while of the state, are not necessarily statist. Properly used, they are meant to make sure that entities other than the government (foreign powers, criminal organizations) aren’t allowed to go all “progressive” on our collective asses. Would people generally agree with that? That a law could increase the state but still not be a negative statist action if it was based on protection from the physical coercion of other actors?
Another way of framing this, in what ways would a classical liberal differ from an anarchist? Because a classical liberal is statist to a degree, just to a much smaller one than the alternative. What’s our criteria?
(I have a feeling on my own criteria, but I often hear other conservatives/classical liberals speak much more strongly about the public good.)
“reparations assholes it is unconstitutional”
Your understanding of the English language is delightfully creative.
Another way of framing this, in what ways would a classical liberal differ from an anarchist?
I would say the primary role of the government is to protect the rights and property of the individual, and to promote the public good with basic services like roads, public utilities, police, fire and rescue, etc. Slightly more government involvement than libertarians, and much more than anarchists.
On the contrary, it seems to me that denying two consenting adults of the same sex the right to form a lawful union
Meya, who has done that? Two consenting adults can have a lawful union, but marriage is one man, one woman.
It is indicative of the infantilizing of contemporary Western culture that produces the breathtaking arrogance that every generation that came before, for hundreds of generations, have not one whit of wisdom to pass on. That only the contemporary generation, possessed of hubris, is All Wise All Knowing and, dammit, They Will Have Their Way Fuck the Consequences.
There are FEW people who would deny a same sex couple … or two maiden sisters or bachelor brothers or two friends, from creating some sort of legal arrangement via contract to insure medical and other care issues are settled. But that doesn’t make those arrangements “marriage.”
Meya is a fascist twat
or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave;
“I would say the primary role of the government is to protect the rights and property of the individual, and to promote the public good with basic services like roads, public utilities, police, fire and rescue, etc. Slightly more government involvement than libertarians, and much more than anarchists.”
I agree with your general outline B Moe.
But, I don’t think that “National Greatness” conservatives like some of the leading thinkers of The Weekly Standard would. Anarchists tend to agree with one another. Libertarians (domestic policy) tend to agree with one another. But conservatives don’t.
So I suppose I can’t really agree with Nock’s formulation until I felt we had established a baseline of acceptable governmental action.
Folks, having a rational non-mendoucheous discussion with the fascist lyinh meya is about as likely as teaching a brick wall to speak Mandarin.
blowhard
from my reading on anarchists, they really are statists in their own right. Look at anarcho-syndicalism. Indeed, anarchists reject the whole concept of property rights. Yet it is property rights that is the basis of individual sovereignty.
Leftists, or cunts like the CNN “reporterrette”, labeling all Tea Partiers as “anti-government” refuse to engage in a discussion on the philosophical underpinnings of the Constitution — That government’s legitimate province is to secure (not grant) the rights of citizens. And I mean rights, not “wishes”. So protection of citizens (police, military) and a forum to settle differences (judicial) are legitimate government services. “Free” medicine, “free” abortions, “free” bunnies, not so much.
Darleen, this fellow Nock, who I hardly know as yet, does not seem to be of the sort of anarchist you cite, and it appears certain he is not a statist of an water. At a guess, I’d say look toward Robert Nozick for a more contemporary thinker of this type (though lemme stress I’m still guessing here).
But, I don’t think that “National Greatness†conservatives like some of the leading thinkers of The Weekly Standard would. Anarchists tend to agree with one another. Libertarians (domestic policy) tend to agree with one another. But conservatives don’t.
There in lies the beauty of the originalist school of thought about the Constitution. Let folks work out the details of the differences on as local a level as possible. I am tired of the homogenization and would like to see more local color return to this country.
“an” should read “any”, my apologies, etc.
“That government’s legitimate province is to secure (not grant) the rights of citizens.”
Darleen, yes, that’s a baseline I agree with. (And, don’t let me derail us with my ignorance of anarchism, I’ve read exactly one book on the topic.)
Yet, (and what I take to be Jeff’s main thrust), I’m not sure how many self-identified conservatives agree with this. Don’t we have to pose the question in those terms — What is the proper role of government? — before we then applied Nock’s determinative test of “bigger gov/less freedom = this” and “smaller gov/more freedom = that”?
Nock seems to be saying that we can avoid the first question and immediately move to the second. I’d agree, but only after we settled the “proper role” question.
“There in lies the beauty of the originalist school of thought about the Constitution. Let folks work out the details of the differences on as local a level as possible. I am tired of the homogenization and would like to see more local color return to this country.”
B Moe. Agreed. But, to the degree that we have a federal government, we do have to answer some of these questions.
i like 57 opinions not 1
“Meya, who has done that? Two consenting adults can have a lawful union, but marriage is one man, one woman.”
Hey, that dude ran the McCain/Palin campaign. Clearly he has no clue.
“But that doesn’t make those arrangements “marriage.—
Past generations have passed on the wisdom that arrangements that are separate but equal don’t work out. But, if the breathtaking arrogance of the present is to ignore it, I’m going to be fine with that for a while.
“or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave;”
Next you’re going to tell me the meaning of emancipation eh?
not arguing with the obtuse and stupid
Past generations have passed on the wisdom that arrangements that are separate but equal don’t work out. But, if the breathtaking arrogance of the present is to ignore it, I’m going to be fine with that for a while.
I’m all for gay marriage, but a 14th Amendment approach is infantile IMO. Gays can marry exactly the same people straights can marry, and straights are prohibited from marrying those of the same sex, just as gays are. It’s like saying laws prohibiting driving on the left side of the road are unconstitutional because they deny the right of people who really, really want to drive that way the “right” to do so.
Possibly useful additional matter from Nock in a pdf, The Theory of Education in the United States: The Page-Barbour Lectures for 1931 at the University of Virginia.
It was argued in Loving vs. Virginia.
I’m quite familiar with the case, SFAG.
But do keep up your lecturing. It won’t make you right. Or make anyone here see you as anything than the lying crapweasel that you are.
Care to address the point, Meya?
Spoken like someone who doesn’t have family members who drive on the right.
Spoken like a spinning crapweasel.
how’s come faggots and lesbos don’t enter into a contract about their property. same as marriage no or do non producers of children rank higher?
Another way of framing this, in what ways would a classical liberal differ from an anarchist?
An anarchist thinks that in the absence of government, thieves wouldn’t be creative enough to band together.
A classic liberal is under no such delusions.
Thanks sdferr.
Started looking through it and already saw, pgs 5-6, that he won’t give up a definition of education. “I could not to save my life, for instance, make a
definition of an oyster yet I am sure I know an oyster when I see one.”
Which is an organic, conservative type thing. Good deal. Makes it hard to write term papers or blog comments though.
“An anarchist thinks that in the absence of government, thieves wouldn’t be creative enough to band together.”
Very good line.
oops. that should be left.
So, because we have those who yearn to drive on the left, their rights are therefore violated if not permitted to do so?
That’s not original, blowhard, but damned if I can remember where I heard it.
“So, because we have those who yearn to drive on the left, their rights are therefore violated if not permitted to do so?”
I’ve found in my experience, and perhaps it is also the wisdom of past generations, that when it comes to concepts like liberty, and happiness, driving on the left is different than love and marriage. But then again, breathtaking arrogance of today might lead others to think otherwise.
breathtaking arrogance
Exactly the thing that’s going to be your downfall, SFAG.
For the record, I don’t think any government should have anything to say about marriage, except, perhaps, to enforce the contractual aspects.
The difference between me and you, SFAG, is that I live in reality.
Most people oppose gay marriage. Period. Hell, SFAG, you couldn’t even get it passed in California.
Your Personal Lord and Savior himself is opposed to gay marriage, SFAG.
It’s not going to get through the Supreme Court on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. Period. Not under the current court, and not under any likely Obama appointees.
It’s not going to get through Congress. Period.
If, by some wild fluke, Obama gets enough Supreme Court appointees (who, let’s note again, will necessarily have to disagree with his own opinion on the matter) to rule in favor of it, there’ll be a new constitutional amendment to ban it again introduced so fast it’ll make your empty little fascist head spin.
And you know what? That amendment will be ratified.
Your hubris is what’s breathtaking here, SFAG, matched only by your stupidity.
If you idiots do manage to cram this through, you’re going to wind up in the position of having to repeal a constitutional amendment.
You do know how many times in history that’s ever happened, don’t you, SFAG?
People care about beer a lot more than they do about whether two random gay guys can get married.
So I wouldn’t be counting on that.
Breathtaking mendoucheousness is responsible for little fascist foot soldiers like meya not be able to differentiate between rights and privileges, and has them compare imutable characteristics like race to choices of sexual behavior.
from my reading on anarchists, they really are statists in their own right. Look at anarcho-syndicalism. Indeed, anarchists reject the whole concept of property rights. Yet it is property rights that is the basis of individual sovereignty.
You are neglecting to consider anarcho-capitalists — anarchists who are staunch supporters of property rights, and in fact, see property rights as the foundation of a stateless, voluntarist society.
An anarchist thinks that in the absence of government, thieves wouldn’t be creative enough to band together.
Band together and do what? Form a government?
(Pssst … they already have … it’s called “the government.”)
I’ve found in my experience, and perhaps it is also the wisdom of past generations, that when it comes to concepts like liberty, and happiness, driving on the left is different than love and marriage. But then again, breathtaking arrogance of today might lead others to think otherwise.
I tend to agree with you, but that’s not the argument you made before. Loving was a clear 14th Amendment issue insofar as it allowed white men to marry white women and black men to marry black women, but not black/white or white/black. Gay marriage isn’t an issue of the 14th Amendment insofar as gays are just as free to marry anyone that a straight is. This is an issue for legislatures, not courts.
Its just that simple to some people. And will be just as simple when gay people get married.
Constitutionally, it is that simple, Meya. The alternative is to mow down the Constitution. Why does the liberal fealty to “democracy” wear thin so quickly when it’s something the left wants?
Another way of framing this, in what ways would a classical liberal differ from an anarchist?
In anarchy, defending one’s property would be in the hands of the individual, and it would soon become all about vengeance. Similar to what you see in inner-city gangs and the Middle East. Or Afghanistan.
Anarchy is unstable anyhow. The ability of the strong to take from the weak with impunity eventuallyl leads the weak to gather together in a walled city and hire toughs to keep other toughs out. Or it results in one or more warlords grabbing as much territory as they can defend, and everyone else seeks the protection of one of them against the others. Or a strong man or group promises stability if you only put them in charge, which is how the Taliban took power.
It’s like saying laws prohibiting driving on the left side of the road are unconstitutional because they deny the right of people who really, really want to drive that way the “right†to do so.
I’m left-handed. It would be more natural for me to drive on the left side of the road.
For the record, I don’t think any government should have anything to say about marriage, except, perhaps, to enforce the contractual aspects.
That always looks like a fair-minded way to deal with the situation, but it runs into problems very quickly. The state (or the community) sticks its nose into the marriage business because it is in the society’s best interest that children be raised by a mother and father that are married to each other. The purpose of making marriage a legal committment (not contract, that’s too commercial) is to ensure that children have an enforceable claim on their parents’ care.
We already have loads and loads of problems with fatherless children. Because lesbians are more likely to form long-term relationships and desire to raise children, legalizing same-sex marriage means that we’re sanctioning even more fatherless children, only this time there’s no “actual” father involved.
(When you eliminate fatherless children from consideration, crime rates for blacks and whites are virtually equal.)
When it comes to marriage, reproduction, and family, men and women are not interchangeable. Same-sex marriage sets in stone the idea that they are. So if it doesn’t work out, if the consequences of same-sex marriage become truly terrible, how do you walk it back? We can’t even walk back the terrible consequences of replacing men with welfare checks.
Would you consider it an equal society where only same sex marriage was allowed?
I would consider it a suicidal society. It would die out within a generation. Two, tops.
The Constitution does not have the capacity to cater to individual inclinations in the way that the SSM advocates want. Having African ancestry is immutable. You cannot choose to “not be African.” You cannot choose to “not live as an African.”
You can choose to not live a gay lifestyle. Or you can choose to live in sin, the way so many hetero couples do: nobody is stopping them.
Would you consider it an equal society where only same sex marriage was allowed? I mean, sure, this hypothetical misses a lot of what goes into an equal protection argument, and so we’re missing out a lot of its force. But I’m still having a hard time seeing how I’d be in a position of equality with someone who can marry their partner because they’re same-sex and I cannot because me and my partner are of the opposite sex.
As dicentra said, it wouldn’t be much of a society and it wouldn’t last long.
The problem with your generalization is that it falls into the trap set by foes of gay marriage insofar as it opens the way to polygamy, polyandry and a host of other relationships that have significant externalities that are not, for the most part, present in gay marriage. Isn’t it possible to make the argument for gay marriage narrowly defined? By kicking open the door using the Constitution, many, many more things will enter that you never intended. That’s what legislatures are for, Meya. Believe it or not, even the Bill of Rights was put to a vote.
I cannot because me and my partner are of the opposite sex.
From a functional standpoint, marriage as an institution and the laws that support it don’t give a rat’s rear whom you consider to be your partner. You are operating under the concept of marriage as a love pledge, not as our species’ method of reproducing.
That’s why societies that do arranged marriages still survive: the basic structure and function of marriage is still there, and in most cases, the partnership developed later (unless you had the bad luck to marry a douche, which happens all the time even without arranged marriage).
Furthermore, marriage is the way that people in healthy societies become adults. Having to be in such an intimate relationship with a member of the opposite sex (who is basically an alien to you) forces you to either hate your life or learn to put yourself in the other persons’ shoes, which are not in any way familiar to you nor are they comfortable. At least not at first.
As it happens, men get along better with other men and women get along better with other women. If you make gay marriage as legit and normal as hetero marriage, people will eventually stop putting themselves through the wringer of hetero partnerships and pair off in same-sex couplings. When this happens (and it has happened throughout history), women become social inferiors because men don’t need them anymore. They might impregnate them from time to time, but the necessary heterosexual structure of the home would cease to exist.
That’s not fair to the kids. And in case you have forgotten, marriage is for the benefit of the next generation, NOT for the benefit of the adults. It’s just that our narcissistic culture thinks that they’re entitled to get what they want simply because they want it. So that they can express their true selves, of course, which are such a boon to society.
(“But what about sterile couples?” in 3… 2… 1…)
“And in case you have forgotten, marriage is for the benefit of the next generation, NOT for the benefit of the adults.”
And, here, we find another odd convergence. Agnostic libertarian I may be, but yeah, I agree.
People vote otherwise, I’m cool with that. But, marriage, that’s clearly about babies. And then later, when things are tough, staying together for those same babies (now bratty teenagers).
But seriously, the Iowa supreme court?
Nice dissembling, SFAG.
I see that a constitutional amendment has already been introduced in Iowa. Just as I would have predicted.
It’s going to pass, too, SFAG. Just hide and watch. If the Dem lawmakers keep blocking it, they’re going to be replaced.
You couldn’t even get this ramrodded through in California, SFAG, and you think it’s going to fly in Iowa?
Good luck with that, eh?
We already have loads and loads of problems with fatherless children
I agree.
Here’s where we disagree: I don’t see it as the job of the government to fix this.
Nor do I see the legal institution of marriage, as it currently exists, as any sort of guarantee (or even incentive) to prevent this. You can get a divorce faster than you can get married in many states.
Parents should be allowed to make lifestyle choices for their children, even if those choices may seem to us to be wrong.
State power leads, not to parents making responsible choices, but to an unelected bureaucracy making the choices for them — which means that the “correct” choice is defined by the people who run the bureaucracy.
Past generations have passed on the wisdom that arrangements that are separate but equal don’t work out
See, I find this so irritating. Infusing the debate with loaded terms. The issue at hand isn’t separate but equal, because there is no separating like they did with black and white children. Gays are not being “separated” from anything. Gosh, it’s almost like propaganda. The other day, some rally I saw on teevee teh gays were comparing themselves to slaves. Gosh. not histrionic or anything.
And, I find dicentra’s comment interesting up there. There used to be some show about gay weddings- and the men were always having these huge, expensive, over-the-top dealos. Cause they were rich. And, the women were having small (cheap) celebrations. I just find that interesting.
OH, and I’m reading this book (I just started so I’m not really prepared to present the whole dealo) but the author points out (and this is related to what we’re talking about) that the two polar sides of American politics isn’t conservative/liberal but (instead) Anarchy and Tyranny. Individual liberty versus Federal power.
As we cede more power to the Federal Government, we inch closer to tyranny.
Would you consider it an equal society where only same sex marriage was allowed? I mean, sure, this hypothetical misses a lot of what goes into an equal protection argument, and so we’re missing out a lot of its force. But I’m still having a hard time seeing how I’d be in a position of equality with someone who can marry their partner because they’re same-sex and I cannot because me and my partner are of the opposite sex.
By your reckoning our current abortion laws are violations of the Fourteenth then, because the father doesn’t have the same rights regarding the fetus the mother does. Do you really want to go there?
#20 – not you. thor. His e-mail (before he started hiding it) was astrobeefcake(then some numbers).
meya, were you here when commenter “actus” was around? I fear a little bit of the hostility you are drawing is in that your commentary style is similar. That was one guy you don’t want to have some associative taint rub off on you…
the two polar sides of American politics isn’t conservative/liberal but (instead) Anarchy and Tyranny.
I think that is pretty much true of all political systems. The way to avoid tyranny is to not only reserve the power the government has, but to keep it diversified, don’t allow it to be consolidated.
Well, yes (about all politics) – I just wanted to focus on American politics. But, eliminate the word, and it’s still true.
The book uses two pyramids to illustrate the focus of power. In Tyranny, the power is consolidated at the top, of course. As you move to the right, the power is consolidated at the bottom. And, as shift toward Anarchy, there is no pyramid.
What I find interesting is that the left (the democrats) is the side that is pushing us toward tyranny. Certainly, the GOP have done there part. But, right now, it is conservative voices who are trying to reign it in.
Here is MIchigan, Jenny Granholm has decided that it’s her job to pick the winners and losers in business by awarding some folks tax credits. The movie industry, for instance. And a few “green” battery firms. What about the little guy with no connections who may have been working away in obscurity on such a thing? With a stroke of a pen, he is done.
“By your reckoning our current abortion laws are violations of the Fourteenth then, because the father doesn’t have the same rights regarding the fetus the mother does. Do you really want to go there?”
I think we can go there. I’m not sure what Roe said on the topic, but I view abortion as more than just family planning — that’s the way in which the father and mother could be equal. I view it as a person’s control of their own body. In that way, the father and mother aren’t similarly situated.
Yep. But no society in the history of the world has defined “marriage” as anything but one or more men cohabiting with one or more women. Even the Sacred Band, so beloved of homosexual activists, never referred to their mutual arrangements as “marriage” — and the (very few) who did in fact marry, did so with a woman.
The pseudo-parallel with slavery is a lie and a deceit. Historically, slavery was utterly indifferent to the race or color of the participants on both sides — the very word “slave” is derived from the ethnic name of the white-skinned, light-eyed, often blonde inhabitants of the country east and north of the Roman Empire which is now Russia, Ukraine, etc.: the Slavs. The predominately dark-skinned Romans considered the pale, unsophisticated Slavs to be cultural and ethnic inferiors, incapable of education and fit only for servitude. We associate race with slavery because of the workings of the American Peculiar Institution, but in fact it was not at all peculiar. In every case where the spread of the society was sufficient to make it possible, slaves have been predominately drawn from people who differed in ethnicity or “race” from the members of the slave-holding classes.
To make the comparison apt, you would have to show that slaves were not permitted to marry other slaves — and I know of no instance of that being the case. Slave owners often — usually, in fact — reserved the right to disrupt such marriages whenever convenient, but when a male slave and a female slave cohabited with the intent to make it permanent, the arrangement was called “marriage” by slave and slave owner alike.
(As an aside: in the little town where I grew up there was an extended family of black people who used the name of the man who had formerly held them, or their ancestors, as slaves. After the Civil War, they left Arkansas en masse to establish themselves in Texas with their former master, for whom they built a fine house that still stands, and conducted their lives under his direction until he died childless and was buried in an elaborate grave with an expensive headstone. One of their stated reasons for the regard in which they held their former master was that he had recognized their marriages rather than breaking them up for breeding purposes or sale.)
As to the historical argument: Human beings have been living together in societies for ten millenia or more. Are you really so arrogant as to believe that you are the first one in all of that time to think of such things? Do you really believe that our ancestors never considered or put into place innovations similar to what you propose? Bullshit. People of ten millenia ago were just as intelligent and innovative as anyone is now. What we see, in the historical and anthropological record, is those societies that survived to be included in the record because their social arrangments led to that survival, and it is foolish in the extreme to simply discard the past as irrelevant. We have, today, incredible wealth and ease by historical standards, and that gives us leeway to experiment with alternatives that would have killed off a hunter-gatherer-scavenger band in short order; but that does not mean that we can simply discard millenia of experience as irrelevant!
Regards,
Ric
#89
Except that there’s a third pary involved. Ooops! Who knew that fucking would lead to this!
Would you consider it an equal society where only same sex marriage was allowed?
meya, in such a society, hetero relationships wouldn’t be outlawed, hetero relationships could still form contracts spelling out the obligations of the people involved including things like medical care and inheritance and in your fantasy society where SSM would constitute around 1% of all couple relationships, heteros wouldn’t be barred from procreating.
Just what “rights” are SSM couples NOT getting? As in the same “non rights” as polyamorous groups? Certainly they at least get the right to have a relationship, which cannot be said of consenting adults who by quirk of fate happen to be related to each other.
There’s a new cause for you, meya, aggitating to bring the obviously backwards Americans into the Wisdom of Sophisticated Europe.
There’s a new cause for you, meya, aggitating to bring the obviously backwards Americans into the Wisdom of Sophisticated Europe.
Precisely my point, Darleen, and in this case it’s really only the “cause” that needs to be changed as all of the arguments have been put forth and accepted under the banner of gay marriage. It’s not a slippery slope fallacy if the premises put forth can be deployed far more broadly than in the current debate. Meya is making a much larger argument here, whether she knows it or not, and I suspect she’d be shocked at how far others will take it once it’s been internalized by the populace.
“Just what “rights†are SSM couples NOT getting?”
I view the problem simply as: they can’t get married. But if you think they can create something just like marriage, then I don’t see the why opposition. If you’re right, then nothing will change. Somehow I doubt that. The joy i saw — and felt — when I saw those first pictures in san francisco isn’t something that the status quo provides. If you think it does, fine. But that doesn’t make much of an argument.
“There’s a new cause for you, meya, aggitating to bring the obviously backwards Americans into the Wisdom of Sophisticated Europe.”
We’ll wait till there’s another thread defining “liberal” without regard to effect on the same day that a major (and failed) GOP operative is advocating for that cause. It was just too good this one time. Enjoy your (classical) liberal symptoms.
Tell you what, meya. Start a campaign to get the Congress to declare cows vegetables. Then vegetarians can eat hamburgers, eh?
Regards,
Ric
The joy i saw — and felt — when I saw those first pictures in san francisco isn’t something that the status quo provides.
Got it, SFAG. Your standard for right and wrong is whether or not it makes you feel good.
Could you possibly be any more narcissistic?
I’d bet that Ted Bundy felt really fucking great when he was strangling his victims.
Doesn’t mean that he had a constitutional right to do it.
Here’s another hint, SFAG: your “feelings” don’t enter into it.
At all.
Sorry.
Good thing Obama supports gay marriage …
“Your standard for right and wrong is whether or not it makes you feel good.”
No my feelings, and the feelings i see in others, tell me how important things are. That’s how I differentiate between marriage and, say, driving on the left side of the road.
There’s other ideas in there, like liberty and equality too. Not in the sense of a 14th amendment argument, but in the sense that those are good things and we should strive for those, as liberals, because “neither the desirability per se of the immediate end which the measure is designed to serve, nor its lack of desirability, has any bearing whatever on this decision.”
meya
Can a society, through its government, define an ideal (as in odds are most advantageous), nuclear (as in basic unit) relationship and offer government sanction and benefits even if there be some people who cannot or willnot partake of that sanction? To be noted that other arrangements are not banned or barred, it is just that the government takes a strictly neutral stance on those other arrangements even as it sanctions only one paradigm.
If “yes” above (which works not only for the institution of marriage, but other institutions like joining the military and receiving vet benefits)
then your objection to marriage defined as one man one woman is feelings-based not rational.
If “no” then you find no difference between SSM and OSM, wherein you reject that men and women are inherently different. You embrace that men and women are interchangeable and that society has no rational reason to support the ideal of children deserving a mother and father married to each other.
you want the state to validate your feelings?
No my feelings, and the feelings i see in others
Your feelings tell you that gay marriage is a good thing.
The feelings of the majority say otherwise.
Why should your feelings win, child?
Oh, right. You’re a fascist.
By the way, I did your lame spin attempt in the last part of that message.
I simply ignored it.
F. A. Hayek interviewed on video by John Sullivan in 1985, running in total approx. 75 mins. h/t Don Boudreaux
[…] PROTEIN WISDOM– Progressivism: Tory! Tory! Tory! …. […]
#99
Maybe you should think more and feel less whn it comes to these political decisions. Me? I likes the comedy of it all.
meya
you cannot agree that the govenment can define the institution of marriage AND also declare marriage as a “right.” It is either one, or the other. And if it is the latter, then there can be no restrictions on it – sex or number or consanguinity – since those are not restrictions on non-marriage relationships and hence irrelevant to restrict the “rights” of consenting adults to marry.
I don’t know who you think you’re fooling here, but I suspect it is yourself.
oh, btw
About as rational as liberty and equality
meya, in the US it is “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness”. Stop confusing us with France.
Sure. I’m saying we should include gay people in this.
And I’m saying that the vast majority of people disagree.
Your feelings don’t count more than those of other people, SFAG. Sorry to break the news to you.
Most of my gay friends couldn’t care a less whether the gub’mint sanctions their relationships. They form their diverse interpersonal relationships without feeling the need to yield an oversight role to the government.
My friend’s’ve got their “visitation rights,” their living wills, their life insurance policies and their shared homes. Some name each other as beneficiary to their IRA’s. Some even have kids. If you want something in life, you build it for yourself. Which I admire, because this frontier-attitude renders the entire “marriage” issue, contrived or real, a non sequitur. Smart, engaged gays in functional relationships just shrug and wonder, what’s “marriage” got to do with my relationship anyway?
In the end, pushed and prodded they’ll agree that this “Marriage-Right” is being foisted on them by paid urban activists, much like “Global Warming,” “stimulus package,” and “Bush hates Black People” were.
I agree, and I think the issue’s prominence in media reports are symptomatic of what I call “bubble politics.” Rafts of paid-to-bark activists practicing insurgent party-politics, using paid, urbano-centric media organizations as “objective” conduits, packed cheek to jowl in brightly-lit corporate offices, their wages paid by unaccountable foreign players, busily pump out a steady stream of “revolution.”
And then the bubble bursts…and Gay people realize that they are being used: their private lives in America are only more rough cloth to patch-up Progressivism’s drooping drag. Ask a gal or a fella straight up, and he’ll say it’s so.
meya
you might like to look at marriage statutes … not one of ’em have a requirement of “love”.
Round and round she goes.
That’s a rather universal one.
The feeling that gay relationships don’t qualify as “marriages” is also a “rather universal one”.
Remember, SFAG, you guys can’t even get gay marriage approved in CALIFORNIA. Your assertion that your personal feelings about the matter are in any way “universal” are, to put it bluntly, simply fucktarded.
“Remember, SFAG, you guys can’t even get gay marriage approved in CALIFORNIA. ”
Hey its not gonna be easy. We’ve had a lot of success so far, compared to other movements of this sort. It aint gonna stop and the numbers are just gonna get better.
“Your assertion that your personal feelings about the matter are in any way “universal†are, to put it bluntly, simply fucktarded.”
I think you didn’t quite understand what i said there. That was me talking a bout marriage period.
We’ve had a lot of success so far
No, you haven’t, actually.
It’s legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut (for now), Iowa (for now), and Vermont (for now).
That’s 4 states out of 50, and I wouldn’t count on it remaining legal in those last three — especially not Iowa.
That was me talking a bout marriage period.
No, that was you talking about your personal views about marriage, to wit, equating a gay relationship with the generally understood definition of the term.
You’re a spoiled child who thinks her whims should alter reality.
Doesn’t work that way, SFAG.
“That’s 4 states out of 50”
Yeah. Compare that to like, how gays were viewed a mere 20 or 40 years ago. I think the gay rights movement has been incredibly successful in the span of a single generation. What other sort of civil rights movement has had this speedy of a success? The guy who ran the GOP campaign just called for gay marriage(!). And phrased it in terms that a nice liberal could understand. Terms this post is about.
“No, that was you talking about your personal views about marriage”
like here “No my feelings, and the feelings i see in others, tell me how important things are. That’s how I differentiate between marriage and, say, driving on the left side of the road.”
I’d say its safe to say most people feel differently about marriage than about which side of the road we’re all gonna drive. No matter their views (pro or anti). You get this, right?
You get this, right?
The overwhelming majority of people are opposed to gay marriage.
You get that, right?
It can’t even pass a popular vote in California.
You get that, right?
If you manage to ramrod it through the courts, it’s going to be banned by Constitutional amendment.
You get that, right?
[…] it’s also about ideas. So, I’ll admit to feeling a sting from this comment, “I’m worried about the dearth of discussion here lately. Perhaps OUTLAWISM has lost to […]
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