November 21, 2008
"hard is perception/easier is blame" Life's Greatest Fool, Gene Clark
In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger writes in "Mad Max and the Meltdown" that "a nation whose people cannot say Merry Christmas is a nation capable of ruining its own economy."
His point is in the tradition of President Eisenhower and many of our more devout and thoughtful Founders. That is, "responsibility and restraint are moral sentiments" instilled by religion, despite the "obnoxious political opinions" of the religious.
Given the mess that we are in, old-fashioned Anglo-American pragmatism is nothing to sniff, wrinkle, or turn up our noses at in matters of economics or religion. So much of what the Journal promotes -- open borders, free markets/free peoples, and rule of law -- are dependent upon those restraints. George Washington, James Madison and others comment on this again and again in their writings.
Lately those fences have been overrun. Because, there really are borders.
Those obnoxious opinions may not be so easily detached from the restraints.
Toward the end of her life movie critic Pauline Kael marvelled that the media promotion of trash as entertainment and art resulted in art and entertainment as primarily trash. Human behavior is not so agile and compartmentalized. Mainly it is as lazy and inert as the Mississipi. And as oblivious to the consequences of its movements.
What Daniel Henninger, President Eisenhower, and the Culture Business seem to want is a reliable social order that functions along the lines your local parish and that ensures cultural license doesn't slide into social chaos and moral squalor. Artists, writers and composers want to be paid and that depends upon most people not behaving as many artists, writers, and composers do. Like selfish rights activists, they require that everyone else remain selfless and honest. The lame duck Congress that has suddenly discovered the virtues of Competence, Imagination, Thrift, Merit, and Work Ethic for the Detroit-based automobile companies doesn't require same from the NEA, HEW, HUD, the FCC, CIA, FBI, USPS, the Park Service et al. We may live in a post-hypocrisy world.
Mr. Henninger wants Function without Form. Form for, let's say, the Catholic Church whose "political" opinions are particularly noxious, is the Sacraments and the Nicene Creed and the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments.
I am sure that one of those opinions that Mr. Henninger is thinking of is the redefinition of marriage. "Prop H8" as it is known in the streets of California. The Wall Street Journal and its unionized reporters are no less vigorous in their support of changing a ten thousand year old institution than the New York Times or Womens Wear Daily. For someone who believes that you should honor "thy father and thy mother" and that marriage is a Sacrament and not a side dish on a cultural menu, this is not mere civic re-calibration. The enlightened's lastest cattle drive is not a simple matter of legal canines barking the herd in the right direction. The stakes are higher than social justice. We won't be stampeded.
I am a life-long bachelor and on a few occassions have been mistakenly assigned the identity of a homosexual and so have had a nasty Howard Griffin-like taste of bigotry. I have no animus toward homosexuals. Love and Charity is required, as is recognition of individual worth (irreconciliable with group regard by the way). Love and Charity does not require us to be stupid or unfaithful, however.
Not even the rough trade martial world of Sparta resulted in the elimination of marriage between man and woman. On the contrary. Hoplites don't come from a cabbage patch.
Mr. Henninger's compliment arrives with a clear view of the back of his hand (as with his colleague, Kim Strassel's comment about "braying about abortion.") Normally thoughtful, he reminds me here of those post-opportunity feminists who want it all. It doesn't work that way as they say in the Church. Those obnoxious opinions cannot be extricated from faith and its architecture. Not without permanent structural damage.
Jerry Rubin used to say, if politics isn' fun, don't do it. I don't have to imagine the laughter in Manhattan at these sentiments. I've heard it. I remember it.
Sam Macombs
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