“Once again, I agree with your general principle, but not all families should stay together. Sometimes they can’t make it work.”
— If one is dangerous to the other and/or to the family then I can understand divorce. That is about it. Again, richer or poorer, sickness or health. So long as one is not physically in danger from the other then work it out. Its not a question of being capable of working it out it is a question of what avenues are available to allow people under emotional stress to make very bad decisions. The stress of daily life effects us all and we take it out on one another. Again, only physical harm is a fair reason to destroy a family.
“What it seems you are hitting on is this notion of “marrying for love” – that it is a harmful notion. Marriage didn’t used to be about love so much as economics. It was about building legacies and having descendants to pass on wealth to. That has changed in the American psyche – now, people largely get married out of love – the love and passion burns out and the marriage ends.”
— Marriage is still about economics in the sense you mean. Once the idea that romantic love was attached to marriage then the society began to reflect the selfishness of this idealized understanding. Marriage is about helping take care of one another. This is economics.
“Passion dies, yes. Sounds like what you are saying here is for couple not to have kids too soon, to see if their love for each other lasts. A problem is that it seems to be instinctual to have the children at the height of love.”
— Love, romantic love, always goes away and sometimes returns. Once you have kids you change, the relationship changes, what stays the same is the commitment.
“What I don’t understand, again, is why it is a problem if two gay people get married, don’t have children or adopt children, and then that marriage ends. It is only a harm to them.”
— Because it harms the child who was adopted. It brings unnecessary confusion and uprooting. You have enough confused and uprooted people in society, that society becomes confused and uprooted. A part of the definition of marriage is that it only ends at death. When as many people get divorced as do in this environment then we can see that the concept of marriage has been undermined. I am not even sure it was done through a plan to undermine it (although one can argue that the early communists, and various other modernists argued for communal living, property and wives. They tended to get quite a few divorces at a time when this was very uncommon, so perhaps their ideas spread and the same sort of chaos their “artistic” lives exhibited has now spread to the rest of society. Its one idea anyway). I think it was done shortsightedly, in the same manner in which you would accept the next undermining, gay marriage.
“I understand that. It seems to be a problem for societal norms rather than the law. What should be done is to encourage an attitude of responsible marriage and responsible child rearing – not keeping certain people from being married in the first place.”
— You are correct in the first part of this statement. Continuing on, pragmatically speaking, the people who do encourage this attitude of familial responsibility, even the hypocrites, are playing the traditional marriage game while those who are discouraging responsibility, think divorce is not such a bad option, are the ones pushing for another diminutument of the institution. They do so in the name of what traditional concepts have always been attacked “individual freedom”. In some cases it is true. Slavery removes from the enslaved any sense of individual right or power to influence their environment. They cannot vote, they cannot gather wealth, they cannot gather influence. This is oppression.
— The freedom to define for yourself what marriage means to you, is non-sensible. Marriage is not an individual institution. It is a status given by the community. While certain government agents have the authority to marry a couple, marriages are still the prerogative of community leaders. A person alone could provide themselves food, shelter, clothes and so be self-sufficient. A person alone, or even a couple, cannot confer onto themselves the status of married couple as marriage is a state within a community.
— One might argue that if various races, nationalities and religions can empower leaders to marry members of their community then why not leaders of the gay community? Going back to previous logic, leaders of the gay community do have the power to marry. They can marry any gay man or gay woman to one another. You argue that this bypasses the intention of the gay community, which is to have same sex marriage. True. But, disallowing same sex marriage is consistent with the reason that society created marriage in the first place. Is consistent with every known community and this distinction is not made in order to subjugate the gay community to the whims of the hetero-centric world. It is done to stave of the social chaos that marriage was meant to keep at bay and which is already partly loosened by our endorsement of divorce.
“I see increasing the standards for divorce as problematic because of the question of “Who gets to decide the standards?”. What amount of trouble in the family justifies a divorce?”
— Meanwhile you don’t see the problem in increasing the standards of bigotry. Who gets to decide what is bigoted? I have already answered the last question regarding the standards for why a couple should divorce, violence.
“As far as I understand it, government doesn’t work that way at this time. I must, by law, pay all of my taxes to the U.S. government, not the Mexican government or the Chinese government. Certainly, I would favor an end to borders and a world government (and try not to freak out and call me the Antichrist here). That way we could have a more equitable distribution of resources, less warfare, less genocide, etc. It would also be difficult, I think, for a world government to oppress 7 billion people.”
— I would not favor an end to borders anymore then I would favor an end to property rights. I don’t agree that equal resources bring about human equality. Some people work harder then others. Some people are more skilled then others (often a function of hard work). Some people are more talented then others. Some people are kinder then others. Some people are more responsible then others. Some people are more selfish then others.
— There is equality under the law. While men, according to population ratio, commit more crimes then women a judge cannot rule that the murder case before her must have been committed by the man before the court, rather then the woman, solely based on that statistic. One needs to bring real evidence regarding that particular crime and that particular suspect/defendant. The government cannot favor one race, color or creed of American. Nature often does. While justice must be blind, the community cannot be.
— Culture, especially Western culture, is a social tool by which people can maintain accountability with each other, and for each other, while minimizing oppression. Rather then law we generally have tradition. If we simply went with nature’s methods, older parents would be left to die when injured because the younger adults feel like eating a bunch of bananas rather then care for their parents. We have developed cultural habits which indicate and reinforce caring; gift-giving, the awareness of special events in people’s lives, caring for the sick and injured, participating in common tasks, participation in special holidays and assemblies of the group. These common practices are bonding agents for people. In some cultures the birthday celebrant gives gifts on their birthdays. In some cultures gifts are received by the birthday celebrant. Some cultures consider the new year to be the day when one adds a year to their age. Some do so on the anniversary of the individual’s birth. What this indicates of the value one culture holds to the individual relative to the group is beyond our conversation. The point is that a group that survives maintains some very regular habits to reinforce a bond. It is not often that the tradition of one culture is so antithetical to another that they are willing to be killed at the borders where these two cultures meet.
— For those rare times when this does happen, you think the solution is to be rid of communal responsibility. This is a simplified version of the ethics you speak from, I know, but this is what you have been saying in your writing. Lets continue. Generally wars happen when one group is incapable of maintaining itself and requires resources that another controls and won’t give up at a price the first group is willing to pay. The price is so damaging to the first group that they would rather risk the lives of those boys they have been giving gifts to, participating in special events with and attributed merit to, then pay the price that group has demanded. While you might think that nothing is ever worth the loss of lives, and that may be true, there will always be someone who thinks otherwise. Unless you are Ghandi, who had the advantage of believing in reincarnation, those who think otherwise are the controlling agents in the equation between a peaceful people and a warlike one. So you either give your head to the jackboot or you accept the need to put one on yourself. No amount of idealism will change that.
— Faith in the possibility of world peace has as little proof in its favor as faith in a deity does. I would suggest that only a deity can bring peace on Earth and so the existence of One is required for the possibility of the other.
— As for oppressing 6 billion people, who would have thought that 300 million people could be oppressed? Many suggest we are being oppressed in our own country and it shouldn’t be possible to accomplish that considering our numbers.
“I see nothing wrong with that, it’s just the attitude that we have no duties to people outside our borders that I take issue with – that our principles of freedom and liberty do not and should not extend to them.”
— Perhaps you, as an individual, can treat everyone equally but the Constitution does not have this duty, nor do the Bill of Rights. The American system of government is meant to favor Americans. These documents define the American government and protect the American people. One does not think that these principles should extend only to Americans. The American system, though, is meant to serve only Americans. If we wish to extend this to foreigners, fine, but it is foolish to extend them to enemies. Foreign combatants are not protected by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. The Geneva Conventions have been given the authority to govern combat. One of the principles of the Geneva Conventions is that if one side breaks them then the other side is free to do as they please. The other side broke the Geneva Conventions long before we did. Case closed.
— I went slightly off point in the last bit of the last paragraph. To finish the point, traditions and culture are meant to create some level of understanding between members of the same culture. Did that burp mean they liked their meal or did it mean they are crude? Did that hug mean we are friends or was it just some way for him to press up against me? Does that ring mean that person is sexually off limits or is it simply decoration? Can I count on my father to raise me, care for my needs, pass on his property to me and my siblings, or is he going to run off, raise someone else’s children and waste his resources on some other family? Can I count on my caring for my children to mean they will care for my grandchildren. Has our culture become so undefined, so “multi-cultural”, and so self involved that we need to give our earnings to the most wasteful sort of institution that man can invent, the government, so that it will take care of us?
“Mussolini and the Japanese fascists were also very militaristic. They did not respect any rights for people from other countries – nor for their own citizens, which is in large part where I draw the distinction between our country and fascism.”
— Not at first. Mussolini did not favor militarism until Hitler’s example. He just thought that the best government is the government that controls and cares for every aspect of the national need. One of those needs happened to be martial. Fascism is a kind of Socialism specific to national or racial identity. Communism is Socialism that desires a one world order. Sort of like what you think looks like a nice idea. All of us unified by our common station, common ability, lack of borders, lack of property, lack of responsibility and personal accountability. One is the nation serving the State. The other is the whole world serving the State. Everything must be offered up to a World Government where the bureaucrats will follow regulations and maintain peace, the environment, health, hearth and all the things we human cattle require. These bureaucrats will not be loyal to any one person, group, identity or station. They will be loyal to an ideal, to Utopia. Its the Left that reads Huxley and thinks it grand. Gore used the phrase “Brave New World” as an ideal, not a warning. His tone in that speech lacked irony. I am not saying the Left can accomplish this feat. I just think that if this is their goal it is a sign of their wrong-headedness. Read “It Takes A Village” and you will find ideas filched directly from Fahrenheit 451.
“Anyway, I’m more satisfied with your answers to my question here. You explained how the collapse of the family harms society, and why that particular tradition is valuable. I’m still not convinced as to why gay people getting married threatens the family – either devoted gay people who are going to raise children, or lovestruck gay people who will eventually get divorced. What I do see is that no one should have children in a marriage if they do not have a proper environment for having children.”
— No one should get married if they aren’t sure they will commit to raising children. Keep your options open for as long as you like. Once you have kids, all other options are closed. Since we cannot look into another’s heart and our culture has so confused the meaning of marriage, there is not much we can do to keep uncommitted couple’s from marrying. They get the benefit of the doubt. As you said, we can’t turn back the clock on this (we could but it will be a long process).On the other hand, gay couples do not get this benefit of the doubt as it is so minority a position that the coupling of gays would produce a marriage (a couple committed to making a family) that allowing it makes an open and declared statement that marriage simply means, these two people are dating really, really, really seriously.
“I would say a connection to a place, a community, etc., can lead to fascist thinking. Even in the benevolent desire to protect the Jewish community from outside threats, a certain Jewish extremist who I can’t remember the name of right now, uttered the words “One Jewish fingernail is worth 1,000 Arab lives” (or Palestinian lives, not sure which). That is what I mean when I say that the tribal impulse leads to fascism. I ought to have qualified it by saying that it “can” lead to fascism.”
— That wasn’t an Israeli extremist who said that. He was a freely elected member of the Knesset, Rabbi Meir Kahane, who said it. This quote was a very serious and well principled utterance. It was spoken by a person who felt responsible for the safety of the Jewish State and it’s people. He was voted into the Knesset whose purpose is to represent the interests of the Jewish People. So a Jewish fingernail should be more important then an Arab life, seeing as the Arabs are enemies of the State of Israel and their people. The care a representative of a nation should take in the lives of foreign nationals is proportional to how where that foreign national is on the ally-enemy scale. If Bush took the interests of a Canadian living in Quebec with the same care as he does my interests then he is not acting as President of the United States. Worse yet, if a leader of a country protects an enemy of his people while harming his own, I consider that a severe betrayal. I suppose you have found a way to be connected to nothing and no one, everything and everyone? You wouldn’t be having this conversation with me if that were true.
“Ah, your son is only 2. How much older do you think you are than me, by the way? I’m curious about that.”
— I assumed you are in your middle twenties. That would make you 10 years younger then me.
“P and IV? Can you explain what you mean by that?”
— My son is learning numbers and letters. Politics, not so much.
