I may be wrong, but it looks to me like you respond to what I have written as you read it rather then finishing the whole post. If that is the case, you really should read the whole response from beginning to end so you get the full argument I am making. I tend to space my points throughout my responses and questions that may arise early on may have been answered later. Seeing that you tend to react quite viscerally to some of my ideas, you may want to take time to calm yourself before responding. You’ll then give yourself the opportunity to comprehend my positions.
“Again, I think I’d include the case where they truly hate each other – the kind of couple where each partner wants the other to die but is not doing anything to facilitate that.”
— Why? How does one prove unexpressed hate?
“In the older days, women could not support themselves economically. They weren’t allowed to get jobs – instead, they were married off like property – the father would “give” his daughter away.”
— You need to do quite a bit more reading of history.
“I want to point out that I was talking specifically about gay couples who do not adopt. Why can’t they get married?”
— I have addressed this ad nauseum. Marriage is about the children.
“I would argue that “til death do us part” is no longer a real part of the definition of marriage. With a 50% divorce rate, it is flipping a coin. It’s lip service.”
— Because the vow to be committed to the marriage, the most important part of the institution, was for many people, removed from the cultural understanding of marriage. It would be better if divorce were made more difficult, rather then further diminishing the meaning of the institution by allowing gay marriage. If half the people who eat chicken die from it, should we add chicken eggs to their diet since they are dying anyway?
“It is consistent, but with changing social norms, the role of marriage in society is changing. Frankly, I doubt it can be stopped. The economic conditions of society are different.”
— You mean like how Americans today need two incomes rather then one in order to live well. You mean like how the costs of doing the things the mother usually cared for is being done at far higher expense, with far less care, then it used to be because she is out working rather then watching the kids. Before you get on me for my sexism, it doesn’t make a difference to me if its the man who stays with the kids or its the woman, the grandparents, whomever. It should be the family but remember, half of all families are divorced. The point is that very few Americans can afford to maintain a family on one income. I suppose your solution would be to get the government to cover the costs of having a family so that people would be free to divorce as often as they like?
“The fear that allowing gays to get married is going to ruin the institution of marriage is what is motivating the push against it. I still don’t see the connection – I doubt gay people will be any more likely to get divorced than straight people.”
— That is pure bs. Are you telling me that gays only thought of getting married once they realized that the rest of us were afraid of the idea?
“I think we can both agree that it is bigoted to hang a sign that says “we don’t serve (insert ethnic/racial/sex orientation slur here)”.”
— Yes, it is bigoted. I wouldn’t do it. I think business owners who are bigoted should have the right to hang that sign.
“As far as your standard for divorce goes, I don’t think even a majority of Americans would support that standard – they would want something a little looser than that.”
— So now the desires of a majority of Americans is a worthy argument against a moral argument. When it was 80% of Americans being against same sex marriage….
“I’m not sure that’s the case, either. In a lot of more primitive societies, elders occupy a central role in the society – they are in positions of power, and they remain the head of the family. A lot of third world cultures treat their elders better than we treat our own. It is perfectly natural to care for elders.”
— Primitives, third-world folk, all these people have a culture which reinforce what may be a naturally positive trait in many folk. The culture teaches us how to treat one another. Some are more prone to caring for our elders then others. But, culture defines the acceptable spectrum and most people try to fit into it. Obviously, given the choice, many people choose not to pay that sort of respect to their elders and are poorer for it.
“We have developed a much more individualistic culture than most others. It may be a sign that our culture won’t last.”
— I have quite a bit of thinking to do over that idea. I already have many angles to consider it from but I have put no order to it. I’m not sure you’ll ever get a proper response to that point from me. I think the problem is that it is too non-specific and, in many ways, contra the position you have consistently taken in the past. Up to now you seemed to be coming from the position that individualism, freedom and liberty are interchangeable in some way and you have been a proponent of them all.
— The thing is, I think we should be more individualistic then we are but every trait has its place. In terms of marriage, it is a specific institution and the will to mold it to any intimate relationship is degrading to the role marriage aught to be playing. In terms of business, art, friendly human interaction and some other endeavors, there is something to be said about individuality. Perhaps the culture’s ill-health is due to us having too much individuality in the some things and not enough in others. I believe that this culture is great enough to correct itself and do not think the Left is currently the corrective ideology.
“You put one on in self-defense, not to take resources from someone else when they won’t sell the resources to you. Obviously, that’s not how it works out in reality, though. Nations don’t really operate in moral terms.”
— There is more to it then that. Iraq is just one example. A nation, such as our own, will wage war when morality and self interest intersect, as they did, and do, in Iraq.
“You either strive for an ideal or you don’t. The ideal world is very difficult to achieve – but at this time, very few people are truly striving for it. Everyone believes it is impossible, so no one tries. Self-fulfilling prophecy.”
— BS. Different people have different ideas of what an ideal world looks like. Reality is sometimes the imperfect meeting of perfect ideas. Plenty of people strove for ideals and failed so horribly that the world was a worse place for it; Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot. It is the acceptance of imperfection that allows for tolerance, variety, opportunity. This too has its limits. You can’t be too jaded nor too idealistic. Striking the balance is tied into the Chinese concept of “correct touch”. This is what Jews found in the Oral Torah and was later codified in the Talmud, Mishna and other rabbinical works of genius. You are too idealistic and inexperienced for your ideas to be pragmatic and substantial. I know I am condescending to you but I have had some positive experiences with telling people what I see. I think you are even aware of your condition. As a limited man you cannot truly comprehend the ideal. One day you might realize that the ideal should be left fate, or G-d, or whatever you feel comfortable thinking of as an infinitely wiser and smarter being then yourself. Maybe that is why we don’t see eye to eye. Maybe you can’t imagine anything being that much wiser or smarter then you. Perhaps you don’t imagine that the Universe could actually be beyond your comprehension.
“Treating the “enemy combatants” in the way we are treating them, by indefinitely detaining them, not applying due process to them, and torturing them (and I believe we do torture our enemies, in those CIA black sites in other countries), undermines our moral authority. Add to that the serious risk of detaining and torturing an innocent person and, we have seriously jeaopardized our moral authority in the eyes of the world. That’s why we have no allies now. If we want to win (whatever that means in the war on terror), we need allies.”
— We treat our prisoners in this war much better then we treated our enemies in any other war. While our wars were in progress we did not and have not released enemy combatants or applied due process to them. I, unlike John McCain, do not think that water-boarding constitutes torture and I, unlike you, do not think we are torturing people in secret sites. So, our moral authority is just fine. In fact, the Iraqis have been joining in the counter-insurgency and put Al-Qaeda on the run, in no small part, because the Iragis now see us as morally better then our enemy. We have turned the corner in Iraq because the Iraqis are realizing they can trust us.
— We do have allies. The Iraqis, the Israelis, the NATO nations, Colombia has been working very hard to ally themselves with us. Unfortunately the Saudis are officially our ally although they behave, in many ways, as a belligerent. We have dubious allies in the Gulf States. India is an ally. Our list of allies is pretty long. The Poles and Czechs are allies with us. The list goes on.
— I will be skipping the Geneva Convention issues as it is so against what I know about them that I feel I need to reread them to properly dress you down.
“I have just as much confidence in gay people to create a devoted relationship as I have in heterosexuals. Why don’t you? Do you believe gays are inherently fickle, of a lesser moral fiber, or more promiscuous?”
— See, you want to frame my argument in bigoted terms. Most gays I know do not want children. I know one gay couple where one just gave birth to a daughter. I know another whose girlfriend left her while they were in the process of trying to adopt a child. All the rest of the homosexuals I know are happy to be free of the responsibility of childrearing. The few polls I have ever read that discuss the desires of gay couples, it is nearly universally true that they do not want children. The movement for same sex marriage does not express their desire for gay marriage in terms of the right of gays to raise children. I have no more or less an issue with heterosexuals who go through a series of relationships then I do with gays who do. I don’t think the commitments between heterosexuals who do not marry are inherently any more meaningful then those of committed, unmarried gays. I have a problem with anyone who is getting married as a statement that, again, amounts to “we are dating, really, really, really seriously”.
“I disagree, and if this way of thinking – that Arab lives are worthless – is very common, it helps explain why the Palestinians hate Israel so much – in part. Nazis would have said the exact same thing about Jews, and it would have been just as horrible.”
— You don’t know how much value Rabbi Kahane put in a Jewish fingernail. If Kahane put as much value in a Jewish fingernail as you do in your mother, would you not allow the death of 1000 people before your mother’s? Okay, that is a but silly but I hope you get one point from my response, don’t be so quick in thinking you understand what someone is saying, means and feels as most of us find it difficult to align the three.
— Here is the problem with your absolutist line of moral thinking. Once you decide something is immoral then it is immoral to the nth degree and they deserve being assassinated for their words. Meanwhile, if you are currently blind to the cultural disintegration our deep, human need for familial order, that committed marriage helps to instil, you figure, being for that institution is backwards, cannot be recreated today or in the future, so we who actively propose to maintain that institution need to just get over our primitive ideas and move on.
— You have no idea what Kahane’s actions were. You are reacting simply to his words. I’m guessing you think Jeremiah Wright deserves to be assassinated seeing as how his words are incendiary, hateful and, unlike Rabbi Kahane’s words, based on lies. Does Wright require an understanding of context while the Jewish plight for a Jewish Homeland is racist, evil, extremist, pure lunacy? Is the struggle to maintain the Jewish identity also backwards? How about the Arab identity? What if the Jewish identity is strongly tied tot he Jewish Homeland? What if the Arab identity is strongly tied to Muslim supremecy? What if the reason the Palestinians don’t have a second homeland (are you aware that 90% of Jordanians are Palestinian?) is because the Arabs are so stuck to the idea that the Jews cannot have a homeland that they insist on maintaining a refugee population rather then let them settle in permanent homes as permanent members of Arab countries?
“I disagree, and if this way of thinking – that Arab lives are worthless – is very common, it helps explain why the Palestinians hate Israel so much – in part. Nazis would have said the exact same thing about Jews, and it would have been just as horrible.”
— First off, this way of thinking is not common at all. Even if it were, perhaps the Arabs did something to the Jews that helps explain why the Israelis, in this hypothetical world, consider the Arabs worthless? History does not begin with a grievance. Since this way of thinking is not common, what then is the Arab excuse for hating the Jewish State?
— Palestine was nothing before the Jewish migrations in the late 19th century. the Ottoman’s controlled that territory and let it fall away to swampland, pestilence, plague, malaria and Bedouin/bandits. Westerners who visited found depression, stagnation, crime, disorder and many died while visiting. Even the Jews who lived there, and there have always been Jews living there, were a backwards lot living in Jerusalem, Hebron and Safed. They were poor, lazy and crude. European Jews began to buy land from the lawful landholders who were mostly Turks and Arabs. They sometimes succeeded in getting Arabs to work with them in the fields which had once been swampland (they drained them by importing Eucalyptus trees). Many Jews died from disease but the will for a Jewish homeland was strong and the Jewish situation in Europe was so dismal that they stayed and more joined them. The Arab leaders began to notice and saw that these Jews were not like the Jews who had been living there for the last many hundred years. Those Jews had been broken by Muslim supremacy and had accepted their dhimi status. These new Jews were hard working, self-sufficient and proud. These Jews needed to learn a lesson about what its like to be an infidel in Muslim countries. So, the Arabs attacked the Jews in the cities. They attacked the Jewish settlements. They raped, they destroyed, they stole. History begins with an attempt at bettering one’s self. That bettering of one’s self is often not at the expense of another. The Jews who came to Palestine, in those days, came with the idea that they could make the region bloom and better the lives of every person living there.
“… Western democracy has to be ruled out. For me that’s cut and dried: there’s no question of setting up democracy in Israel, because democracy means equal rights for all, irrespective of racial or religious origins.”
— Whats the problem here. A Jewish homeland is a Jewish homeland. I don’t have a problem with the Arabs living their lives as Arab Muslims in their country. I don’t have a problem that the laws of Catholicism be the ruling principle of the Vatican. Why shouldn’t the Jewish homeland follow Jewish principles and Jewish laws?
““I want to scare them and I want to make them realize that, contrary to what they have believed for fifteen years, time is not on their side… And I approve of anybody who commits such acts of violence. Really, I don’t think that we can sit back and watch Arabs throwing rocks at buses whenever they feel like it. They must understand that a bomb thrown at a Jewish bus is going to mean a bomb thrown at an Arab bus.”
— I disagree with that specific statement made by Rabbi Kahane. If you dig a little into the context of the statement, you’ll find it came under a heading we might consider the conditions under which the State of Israel has become lax in its duty of protecting its citizens. It should be the Jewish State, not individual vigilantes, that inflict the bombing and to some limited sense it does. I think that if people attack any sovereign nation, it is the responsibility of that nation to defend itself and go after the leaders who justify, train and plan these attacks. An attack from another State is an attack by that State, unless they do something to punish those individuals who attacked and keep others individuals form finding it easy to do the same.
“So, a bomb thrown at a Jewish school bus will be a bomb thrown at an Arab school bus, then. That is evil.”
— What then is the appropriate response to someone attacking your children with bombs? I’ll tell you, someone threatens my son’s life, I will end them. A fingernail on my son means more to me then 1000 of any other life.
— Now, I wouldn’t want the death of 1000 people for the sake of my son’s fingernail. The point is, in the question between my son and anyone else, or even 1000 anyone elses, there is no question. Still, I would be proud if when my son grew up he would see the value in joining the military and contribute to our communal safety in a disciplined, principled and well trained manner. If there came a day when someone hijacked a plane and flew it into a building, I would want my son to be out there hunting and killing those responsible and those working to echo that attack. When I read about Iraqi people finally coming to understand the goodness of the American fighting forces, that they see how hard they are willing to work, that Iraqis see we are working with and for their betterment, that our men and women are risking their lives (rather then quoting party line platitudes from the safety of the University) to make that country work and that they recognize we are better then Al-Qaeda, my pride chokes me up. We are a great country on a great mission. This is why I resent people like Obama who point only to the negatives of the present so they can sell us an idealized future that only they can help us realize. To some it seems every struggle is a tragedy and every success a crime.
“I have never advocated such disconnection.”
— Every idea, every common bond, every word we speak is a tribal sort of “connection to a place, a community, etc., (that) can lead to fascist thinking.”
