The Moral Birds and the Bees
As James Q. Wilson has shown, being
born to an unmarried mother is by far the most significant factor
disposing children to a life of crime — more significant than
IQ, race, culture, or education. All of us therefore have a
deep and lasting interest in marriage, as the only known way
to reproduce the moral order. We have an interest in ensuring
that this institution is not trivialized or abused, not reduced
to a Disneyland caricature or deprived of its privileged place
in the scheme of things — which is, socially speaking, that
of a link between generations.
Marriage in a religious society
is a religious event: not a contract between mortals but a vow
before the gods. Such a marriage raises the bond between husband
and wife from the secular to the sacred sphere, so that whoever
breaks the bond commits an act of sacrilege. Civil marriage
(as introduced in modern times by the French revolutionaries)
has gradually displaced the religious institution, so that marriage
is now conducted by the civil authorities, and the change in
status is not ontological, like the change from secular to sacred,
but legal. In effect marriage has become a contract and has
gradually assumed the provisional and temporary character of
all merely secular arrangements. This was not the intention
of those who invented civil marriage. In taking over and secularizing
the institution of marriage the state was hoping to confer fiscal
privileges and legal guarantees that would substitute for religious
sanctions, and so help to make our commitments durable. It did
this from the belief that marriage is vital to the future of
society. The state in effect lent its aid to traditional sexual
morality, by privileging faithful union between man and wife.
And it did so for the very good reason that the future of society
depends on this kind of union.
Now, however, the marriage contract
is being enlarged to accommodate the permissive morality. Marriage
is ceasing to be a sacrificial union of lovers, in which future
generations have a stake, and becoming a transitory agreement
between people living now. It is from this perspective that
we should view the controversy over gay marriage.
This is not really a controversy
about the rights, freedoms, and life-chances of homosexuals.
It is a controversy about the institution of marriage itself.
Can marriage retain its privileged place in our moral thinking
when so effectively severed from the process of social reproduction?
Already the secularization of marriage has led to easy divorce,
serial polygamy, and growing insecurity among children. But
marriage in its fundamental meaning is a form of lifelong commitment,
in which absent generations have a stake. If marriage can be
celebrated between homosexual partners, then it will cease entirely
to be anything more than a contract of cohabitation, and the
legal and fiscal privileges attached to it will seem both unjustified
and dangerous, so many openings to litigation. Lovers' quarrels,
exalted into marital disputes, will be endowed with an intransigent
bitterness, while transient crushes will be foisted on friends
and colleagues as institutional facts. In effect, marriage,
as the institution through which society offers its endorsement
and support to the raising of children, will have ceased to
exist.
The demand to make institutions
conform to our desires, rather than our desires to institutions,
is one of the great American failings. Thanks to their Puritan
heritage, Americans regard hypocrisy as a serious vice, and
sin as so lamentable a condition that it must be avoided at
all costs. If the only way to avoid sin is to redefine your
sins as innocent pastimes, that is what Americans will do. Elsewhere
in the world people have learned to extol marriage as the only
innocent sexual relation, while nevertheless failing to live
up to it. The important thing for normal un-Americans is to
keep up appearances, to acknowledge one's own sinfulness, and
to be prepared, when the crunch comes, to give up your lover
for your spouse. La Rochefoucauld famously described hypocrisy
as the tribute that vice pays to virtue. In the sexual mores
of today's America, however, hypocrisy is regarded as the only
genuine sin. Which is why, in America, sexual virtue gets no
tributes at all.
Roger Scruton
National Review
http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200602140942.asp
--
Explaining Jews: A Very Insecure
People
Jew-hatred or antisemitism has
been so deep that tens of millions of people have equated the
Jews with the devil and many more have desired that the Jews
be erased from the Earth. Such an attempt was made only one
generation ago in what is called the Holocaust (or Shoah, the
Hebrew term). This was the German Nazi attempt to murder every
Jewish man, woman and child, which resulted in the murder of
two out of every three Jews in Europe.
To give an idea of how many Jews
have been murdered for being Jews, all one needs to do is look
at population
statistics. Scholars estimate the population of the Roman
Empire at about 60 million at the time of Jesus. According to
the dean of Jewish historians, Professor Salo Baron, at that
time Jews comprised about 10 percent of the population. That
means that 2,000 years ago there were about 6 million Jews.
It is also estimated that at that time, the world's population
was about 200 million.
Today the world's population is
over 6 billion. While the world's population is about 30 times
larger than 2,000 years ago, the Jewish population has barely
doubled. Had Jews been left alone to procreate at the same rate
as others, there would be about 180 million Jews in the world
today. Moreover, even the 6 million number for the Roman empire
represented a huge loss of population due to extensive killing
of Jews in the 12 centuries from their inception.
It is true that Jewish population
losses have been also due to assimilation, but this assimilation
was itself overwhelmingly a result of persecution — forced conversions,
desire to lead a far safer life as part of the majority culture,
etc. In fact, because of the Holocaust, there are fewer Jews
today than there were 100 years ago.
One can now understand why the
Passover Haggadah — the special prayer book for the Passover
Seder meal, first written about 2,000 years ago — contains this
famous statement: "In every generation there are those
who rise against us to annihilate us... "
As a result, Jews are probably
the most insecure group in the world. This may come as a surprise
to most non-Jews, since Jews are widely regarded as particularly
powerful. But Jews' power and Jews' insecurity are not mutually
contradictory. In fact, Jews' power derives in large measure
from their insecurity. The stronger the Jews' influence, Jews
believe, the less likely they are to be hurt again.
Fear of being hurt again is the
major reason most identifying Jews are so protective of Israel.
First, they fear that without Israel, Jews are far more vulnerable
to another outburst of antisemitic violence. And this has been
true. Israel, for example, was Soviet Jewry's great defender
(along with America and Diaspora Jewry) and the place to escape
to. Only a very strong Israel, Jews believe, can prevent another
Holocaust. Second, Jews believe that Arabs and other Muslims
want to do to Israel and its Jewish inhabitants what the Nazis
did to the Jews. And given the Palestinians' desire to destroy
Israel, the Iranian regime's repeated calls for the annihilation
of Israel, and the number of Muslims who chant, "Death
to Israel," this fear is entirely warranted.
Dennis Prager
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/dennisprager
/2006/02/21/187194.html
--
Extreme Makeover
Scientific evidence that political
anger is dangerous
There is abundant evidence that
extreme political opinions lead to the personal demonization
of fellow citizens. Consider, for example, how those on the
far left and far right respond when asked for a zero-to-100
score of their feelings toward people with whom they disagree
politically. Political scientists find that scores below 20
on these so-called feeling thermometers are very unusual — except
on the political fringes. Indeed, according to the 2004 National
Election Study, one in five "extremely liberal" people
gave conservatives a score of zero, a temperature you or I might
reserve for Osama bin Laden. The same percentage of "extremely
conservative" people gave liberals a zero.
Ironically, these angry folks tend
to feel that they are more compassionate than others — while
their personal actions tell a different story. Take people on
the far left. According to the General Social Surveys in 2002
and 2004, those who say they're "extremely liberal"
are 20 percentage points more likely than moderates to say they
feel concern for less fortunate people. But this doesn't appear
to translate well to a deep concern for any individual: This
group is also 20 points less likely than moderates to say they'd
"endure all things for the one I love." To some, this
might support the stereotype that the far left loves humanity
— but only in large groups.
Like extreme liberals, extreme
conservatives are more compassionate in theory than in practice:
They are slightly more likely than centrists to say they "feel
protective of people who are taken advantage of." Unless,
it seems, they are the ones taking advantage: It turns out they
are substantially less likely than moderates to act honestly
in small ways, such as returning change mistakenly given them
by a cashier.
It may or may not be that extreme
politics is by itself what makes a person angry and uncompassionate;
but it certainly cannot be improving the situation. After all,
the partisan political machine today is geared toward the destruction
of opponents — to convince us that the other side is not just
misguided, but evil. Mounting evidence that adherence to extreme
political attitudes correlates with a fundamental lack of compassion
is not encouraging for the future of our civic culture, as long
as rage is used as a political device.
For our political leaders, a bit
of anger management would be in the public interest.
Arthur C. Brooks
Opinion Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007992
