Data Point 1: The Washington Times has this bit about the ongoing destruction of the traditional family. It's worth reading the whole thing, but this statistic in particular is important.
Married couples with children have an average income of $80,000, compared with $24,000 for single mothers.
Data Point 2: ABC had a 20/20 segment on polyamory wherein they look at it in an open-minded fashion. (H/T: Ann Althouse)
Data Point 3: The conversation on Ann's blog post with comments like this:
Your support for the gay activist agenda, I've concluded after reading your comments on porn, is that you believe that gay marriage will persuade gay men to engage in the "nice" sex that you endorse.
You're full of (expletive) on that one.
Traditions exist for reasons that are hard to visualize or explain, because they developed over centuries out of day to day human experience.
You've really over-intellectualized yourself into a stupor on the gay marriage stuff.
Here are the orgiasts, declaring that they will play "nice," just as you asked. They've checkmated you.
Shouting Thomas is shouted down in many of the following comments by the same-sex marriage crowd. All of the cliched logical traps are sprung about finely differentiating between gays, straights, people who can have kids, people who can't, statistical differences between married gays and traditional families, etc. It's all so very well-reasoned.
It's also the same nonsense debate we've had for the last 40-50 years.
Connecting the dots
You can't have a smaller government while the underclass grows. Americans won't stand for that. You can't elect flinty-eyed, hard-hearted, totally practical people to major offices. Give it up. If you want a smaller government and lower taxes, you're going to need more people earning $80K and fewer people earning $24K. ABC News is fighting you tooth and nail on that one, even if they're too indoctrinated in progressive, open-minded conventional wisdom to get it.
The 20/20 piece relies entirely on interviewing couples who are two or more standard deviations off the mean for their behavior. It's a conversation held entirely within the white, highly-educated, upper-class, progressive bubble. The entire piece is an act of non-judgmentalist fantasy. Polyamory leads to the total destruction of society through the breakdown of family relationships. There are no two ways about it. Imagine holding those interviews in Compton or East St. Louis or any of the cities on the single parent hit parade where polyamory is the norm.
People aren't rational, they're rationalizing. Sex is fun and everyone wants more fun. Like Shouting Thomas suggested, it's easy to over-intellectualize what's going on here. With libertine "intellectuals" like those on the 20/20 staff leading the way, we give credence to the concept that everyone can do their own thing and there need be no rules, no standards, no expectations. When it's tried outside the Harvard faculty lounge, the results have been disastrous.
Sixteen trillion dollars later, we're all doing our own thing on the edge of a volcano that is about to erupt. More people earning $24K and fewer people earning $80K has been the result and it's a recipe for fiscal disaster.
As you hope and wish and work for a smaller government, rewatch that 20/20 piece and try to work out how you're going to get it with morals like that.
It's also the same nonsense debate we've had for the last 40-50 years.
Connecting the dots
You can't have a smaller government while the underclass grows. Americans won't stand for that. You can't elect flinty-eyed, hard-hearted, totally practical people to major offices. Give it up. If you want a smaller government and lower taxes, you're going to need more people earning $80K and fewer people earning $24K. ABC News is fighting you tooth and nail on that one, even if they're too indoctrinated in progressive, open-minded conventional wisdom to get it.
The 20/20 piece relies entirely on interviewing couples who are two or more standard deviations off the mean for their behavior. It's a conversation held entirely within the white, highly-educated, upper-class, progressive bubble. The entire piece is an act of non-judgmentalist fantasy. Polyamory leads to the total destruction of society through the breakdown of family relationships. There are no two ways about it. Imagine holding those interviews in Compton or East St. Louis or any of the cities on the single parent hit parade where polyamory is the norm.
People aren't rational, they're rationalizing. Sex is fun and everyone wants more fun. Like Shouting Thomas suggested, it's easy to over-intellectualize what's going on here. With libertine "intellectuals" like those on the 20/20 staff leading the way, we give credence to the concept that everyone can do their own thing and there need be no rules, no standards, no expectations. When it's tried outside the Harvard faculty lounge, the results have been disastrous.
Sixteen trillion dollars later, we're all doing our own thing on the edge of a volcano that is about to erupt. More people earning $24K and fewer people earning $80K has been the result and it's a recipe for fiscal disaster.
As you hope and wish and work for a smaller government, rewatch that 20/20 piece and try to work out how you're going to get it with morals like that.
Chicken-egg.
ReplyDeleteSocial cons think moral decline causes dependency.
Libertarians think dependency causes moral decline.
Both are right.
Brother! (Hugs - in a very manly way.)
ReplyDeleteKT,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. Part of the problem, IMHO is that we have relegated to the state what was formerly the province of the church. Since the state must constitutionally favor no particular religion, it operates in a manner antithetical to my values. Two examples follow.
1. Marriage was only a function of the church until about two centuries ago. As a result, the church could impose rules not just about same sex marriage or polygamy, but about re-marriage after divorce. Barriers to divorce was beneficial to society as a whole.
2. Assistance to the poor became a state function in the last century. When performed by civil society (i.e. not the government) the individuals receiving aid could be demanded to fulfill their part by looking for work, not fathering out of wedlock, etc. When "welfare" is an entitlement, then there is no incentive to reign in bad behavior and in fact incentives to increase it.