End of the culture wars

NY Post ^ | June 27, 2010 | Kyle Smith

[Scanian]

You know something is changing in American mores when the supposed leader of the culture wars from the right, Sarah Palin, declares that smoking pot is “a minimal problem” and that “if somebody’s gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in.”

Like many other pointless wars, the culture conflict has mainly resulted in exhaustion. Now the troops are laying down their arms and going home.

More and more Americans, particularly in the youngest generation of adults, are shrugging at drug use, gay relationships, pre-marital cohabitation, single motherhood, interracial marriage (which is now all but universally accepted) and gun ownership. More and more people aren’t bothering to lug their church to the voting booth.

[RightOnline]

Nonsense.

Next...

[OHelix]

What the heck is immoral about interracial marriage and gun ownership???

[samtheman]

This article implies at the end that the Republican Party has been using social issues as a way to give themselves cover while they vote for socialism in lock-step with the democrats.

If this is true, and that now Republicans are forced to become more fiscally conservative, then the overall change is a plus. And I say that as an old-fashioned social conservative, but one who is scared to death of the rise of socialism in America.

[nathanbedford]

Some time ago I published the following reply which was, of course, directed toward a different article and therefore toward a different author but it nevertheless treats of some of the issues raised by the author of the subject article today:

The author is right in the sense that gay intensity is destined to defeat diffuse resistance by the majority of Americans. But the author fails to tell us why there is a lack of intensity of resistance. He failed to tell us that for a likely for the same reason that he fails to connect gay marriage as an agent of damage to conventional marriage. The chain of causation is simply too attenuated.

By way of personal clarification, I have long been posting on these threads That the Frankfurt School has undertaken deliberately to undermine the institution which save a society from communism and primary among those institutions is the institution of marriage and the family. There is no question in my mind whatsoever that the left would like to abolish marriage, deconstruct the family, especially the role of the father as head of the household. But that does not tell me what the causal connection between homosexual marriage is and the destruction of conventional marriage. So long as this connection is murky, resistance to gay marriage will be increasingly diffuse.

Add to that the fact that many conservatives are quite willing to extend many of the benefits of marriage to gays indirectly by the option of exercising a partnership contract, and the damage to conventional marriage becomes even more attenuated.

There is a libertarian wing of the conservative movement which is very reluctant to impinge on personal liberty as an accommodation to the religious views of others. Libertarians get very antsy when social conservatives seek to use the law to impose their religious tenets on the private conduct of others. When that private conduct does not harm some innocent party, many conservatives such as myself are inclined to side with the Libertarians.

Some decades ago it was against the law in Connecticut to use contraceptives. In my view, this was a perfectly constitutional exercise of power by the state but an equally stupid exercise of power by the state. Eventually this intrusion on the rights of adults engaging in consensual private activity began to gnaw on the conscience of society. The Supreme Court disagreed with my view of the constitutionality of the law in Griswold versus Connecticut. I think the Supreme Court was wrong just as I think the state of Connecticut in enacting the law was wrong. Subsequently, the rationale of Griswold was employed to justify the ruling of Roe versus Wade. In the Roe case we have real victims, in fact, we have about 40 to 50 million dead babies. It is hard to think of how victims could be more real than that.

Recently, the Supreme Court has ruled that homosexual activity between consenting adults conducted in private may not be criminalized by the state. Shades of Griswold versus Connecticut. Here again, I don't see any causal connection between two consenting adults sodomites buggering each other in private, and harm to me or mine. Yet, I would uphold the constitutional power of the state to regulate the conduct although I do see a great deal of potential harm in an intrusive government.

I would welcome responses that deal with the issue of public harm caused by gay marriage with a careful exegesis of the architecture of the causation.

[Hugin]

Moreover, when we’ve heard the last Southern pol protest that God didn’t launch humanity with Adam & Steve (no, but if he had, the decor in the Garden of Eden would have been amazing), Republicans won’t be able to hide from their economic positions.

Hide? The whole TEA Party movement isn't about drugs or same sex marriage, it's all about economic positions, as in curtailing government and not spending ourselves into oblivion. It's the left that has to manufacture phony crises, push bills through without reading them, and use the courts to overturn the will of the voters.

[muir_redwoods]

I see little nonsense in this article. He seems to guage the changes in our society fairly accurately. The young are increasingly libertarian in their outlook with significant cohorts who are, either leftist or socially conservative at he edges. It’s the middle that decides elections and that seems to be more and more “live-and-let-live” libertarian.

[RightOnline]

I find it to be total nonsense. Some kid quoting dubious “polls” to support his contention that social conservatism is dead.

[muir_redwoods]

No one said it was dead; did you read it? It likely is wanning though. There can be little doubt that younger people, you know,the ones that will be here when you and I are gone, are more accepting of the kind of social change that was radical in 1970. They also recognize that socialism doesn’t work. I wouldn’t call this story great scholarship but I think calling it “nonsense” is putting one’s head in the sand.

[RightOnline]

Yes, I read it....and yes, I’m perfectly capable of comprehending the writer’s “thesis”, thank you very much. Anything else?

[firebrand]

Fortunately, we are still able to vote according to our commonsense ability to foresee the unprovable results of our legislation and presidential choices. SCOTUS is not given this prerogative and so will always be battering down the walls of morality, as social results are not provable.

Griswold is seen by many as a cynical, premeditated attack on the unborn. Start with contraception for married people and proceed penumbra by penumbra to the slaughter of human beings.

Tell me I’m wrong about SCOTUS. I know there are precedents for ruling according to tradition and the interest of the state. Yet these principles are vague and legalistic and therefore don’t stand up to the itching ears of the uninformed and licentious—a winning combination that will cause us to lose as a culture.

[Fzob]

More and more Americans, particularly in the youngest generation of adults, are shrugging at drug use, gay relationships, pre-marital cohabitation, single motherhood, interracial marriage (which is now all but universally accepted) and gun ownership. More and more people aren’t bothering to lug their church to the voting booth.

Well it's no surprise that any of these issues are viewed as acceptable (except the gun ownership). The present generation is bombarded with teaching, images and words that tell them all of the above are normal healthy life choices. In fact the same images, words and teaching tell them to be socially conservation is the same as being intolerant.

There's no war anymore, maybe a brief scuffle breaks out once in a while. With the social conservative winding up with a bloodied nose after being called an intolerant ignorant bully.

[Tribune7]

Funny how they left abortion off that list.

And who exactly is defending single motherhood as a desirable choice to be encouraged?

And why isn't Obama supporting gay marriage?

The idea that laws don't make for morality is one thing. The idea that the old morality isn't right is another.

It is nice, though, to see the NY Times come out against gun control.

[Tribune7]

Funny how they left abortion off that list.

And who exactly is defending single motherhood as a desirable choice to be encouraged?

And why isn't Obama supporting gay marriage?

The idea that laws don't make for morality is one thing. The idea that the old morality isn't right is another.

It is nice, though, to see the NY Times come out against gun control.

[Tribune7]

About 50 years ago a lot of people in this country thought interracial marriage was immoral and there were even laws passed against it --almost all by Democrats, btw

Up until, well, now, I guess, the NY Times and it's readers have held gun ownership to be immoral.

[Tribune7]

Ouch. This article is from the Post & not the Times

[jazzlite]

...”I see little nonsense in this article. He seems to guage the changes in our society fairly accurately. The young are increasingly libertarian in their outlook with significant cohorts who are, either leftist or socially conservative at he edges. It’s the middle that decides elections and that seems to be more and more “live-and-let-live” libertarian”...

It is a hopelessness..The late Dr. Francis Shaeffer, in Vol. 1 of his Christian View of Philosophy and Culture, states on p. 321..”Weep for our generation! Man, made in the image of God and intended to be in vertical communication with the One who is there and who is not silent, and meant to have communication with his own kind, because of his proud rationalism, making himself autonomous, has come to this place. I would end this chapter with a quotation from “Satyricon” by Fellini. Toward the end of the film a man looks down at his friend who is dying a ridiculous death, an absolutely absurd death. With all his hopes, he has come to a completely absurd end. Modern man, made in the image of God and meant to be in communication with God and then with his kind, has come to this place of horrible silence. In the film Fellini has the voice say, ‘Oh, God, how far he lies from his destination now.’ There was never a truer word!”

[Scanian]

In my neck of the woods, one is and one isn’t.

[Scanian]

Once I determined that legislating morality is a losing endeavor, I hooked my wagon to libertarianism.

Immorality is best fought by churches and individuals and the powers of persuasion and prayer. Government is a very poor vehicle for promoting decency and reformation as the Chicago slimeballs who are attempting to rule over us prove every day.

[Scanian]

I, for one, intensely dislike the idea of linking the tea party movement with Republicanism.