Liberal/conservative again

I found a whole new take on the Liberal/Conservative debate: the book Skipping Toward Gomorrah by Dan Savage. http://www.skippingtowardgomorrah.com/

While I don't accept his view that drugs can be harmless, or his view that adultery can be committed ethically, I do believe anti-helmet law activists would agree with this:

...The law shouldn't be concerned with preventing people from harming themselves. Our bodies and minds and souls are our own, and we should be free to use and abuse and dispose of them as we see fit.

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Savage spends a lot of ink blasting people like William Bennett and Dr. Laura as moral worrywarts. My view? Bennett and Schlesinger are no different from the educators who would ban "dodge ball" as harmful to kids' self-esteem. It's the "For heaven's sake let's do something" syndrome.

By successfully framing the debate as virtue versus sin, and not the laws versus your freedoms, the virtuecrats have succeeded in silencing their political foes and the sinners who enjoy the happy pursuits virtuecrats seek to ban.

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Tonio,

I'm curious, why do you feel this way?

My view? Bennett and Schlesinger are no different from the educators who would ban "dodge ball" as harmful to kids' self-esteem. It's the "For heaven's sake let's do something" syndrome

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I'm curious because that's about 180 degrees from how I understand what they advocate. I'll probably learn something from your take on them.

Thanks

As far as Savage, it seems that he is just trying to be funny for the audience of people who haven't read Borks book but just "know" that there is stuff in it that they would find funny or outrageous...if they ever bothered to read it.

That's interesting to.

Thanks for your reply, Larry.

Here's my take on people like Bennett and Schlesinger--they seem to believe that government ought to legislate morality. They apparently want pornography and homsexuality banned by law again, as they were until the 1960s. In fact, Bennett laments the "evil, wicked" '60s as the decade where America supposedly lost its way.

Implicit in this is the notion that government knows better than the people. That sounds a lot like the arguments that other conservatives make in favor of school vouchers and less gun control. I'm not a Libertarian, but that party has a point about paternalistic government. What problems should government attempt to solve? What standard should be used for determining government's role? It doesn't seem right to me for government to use one standard for guns and another for penises.

I'm a big fan of Bob Bennett and Dr. Laura and I can't remember ever hearing them advocate government banning pornography or homosexuality. They are fairly vocal that they think these things aren't beneficial to society but I've never heard them say to ban it. I've heard them say that children shouldn't be exposed to it and government shouldn't pay for it - and I agree witht hat.

Dr. Laura has a personal problem with homosexuality but that would just be her opinion and she says so plainly. The only time she goes off about it is when some nut calls her and says he/she is ditching their children and family because they've decided they're gay. Then she tells them (like she tells everyone), "Too bad - you made a committment and now you must stick by it until your children are grown." And I think she's right.

What's wrong with virtue and moral standards?

Originally posted by vraiblonde
.... What's wrong with virtue and moral standards?

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They get in the way of having fun.

Originally posted by vraiblonde
What's wrong with virtue and moral standards?

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Not a thing. While our society has some common moral values, some other moral values vary from person to person. Some people believe it's morally wrong to eat meat or drink alcohol. And not everyone believes that pornography (for adults) or homosexuality is immoral.

Maybe Bennett or Dr. Laura haven't explicitly advocated the return of morality laws. But when I read their stuff, the message I get is America went to hell when those laws were taken off the books. It wasn't so long ago that government's definition of porn included books like James Joyce's Ulysses. And it wasn't so long ago that men could be arrested for homosexual conduct.

Was this use of government power appropriate or inappropriate? Does government have any role in what many people consider to be private morality? If a person is reading Hustler at home or drinking Wild Turkey at home, does he pose an inherent threat to society?

Originally posted by Tonio
I found a whole new take on the Liberal/Conservative debate: the book Skipping Toward Gomorrah by Dan Savage. http://www.skippingtowardgomorrah.com/

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O'Reilly ripped him a new one - I've never seen a person on the Factor so ill prepared to defend their views.

Originally posted by Tonio

Maybe Bennett or Dr. Laura haven't explicitly advocated the return of morality laws. But when I read their stuff, the message I get is America went to hell when those laws were taken off the books. It wasn't so long ago that government's definition of porn included books like James Joyce's Ulysses. And it wasn't so long ago that men could be arrested for homosexual conduct.

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But if they aren't advocating the reinstatement of those laws, how bad they were is kind of irrelevant, isn't it?

I do think a lot of bad stuff came about in the 60's - and 70's, and 80's - and a lot of "virtue" - or good old fashioned integrity - was regarded as some kind of fool's game. You can't legislate this, even as you bemoan its loss - but you can convince people of the need for some of it. You can actually convince kids that waiting for sex is a good idea, and that drinking or taking drugs is not going to be good for them. You can make laws till the cows come home, but as long as people want to break them, you can't have change.

I've been reading a lot lately about the anti-slavery movement in this country. Early on, people really thought it would JUST DIE OUT on its own, as early as the Revolution. They figured that public outcry would build to the point where it would just vanish, because people would just see that it was wrong. Even Lincoln, who rose to office on an anti-slavery ticket, was against legislating against slavery, preferring to teach against its evils and getting the public to change its mind. UNfortunately - this didn't happen, but that people were looking for new ways to EXPAND slavery even more.

Every time someone mentions how good it was a generation ago, there's always someone who brings up the very worst that happened in that era. I really don't think it can be argued that we lived in a safer world then. What DID happen to this country? When did it change, and why?

I guess it's like anything else, some changes were for better and some were for worse.

Education campaigns are as old as time and they rarely work. Carry Nation even tried educating people on the evils of liquor before she gave up and started busting up saloons. Abigail Adams tried the gentle approach to no avail when it came to sufferage. Her contemporary sisters busted the place up and got some action. Same thing with slavery, as Frank pointed out.

You can try to educate people all you want but typically they don't want to be educated. Sometimes you just gotta bust the place up.

Originally posted by Frank
Every time someone mentions how good it was a generation ago, there's always someone who brings up the very worst that happened in that era. I really don't think it can be argued that we lived in a safer world then. What DID happen to this country? When did it change, and why?

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My theory? Human history is filled with crime and war. But we didn't always have newspapers, radio, television and the Internet supplying us with a constant diet of bad news. Also, I think we remember our childhoods as largely trouble-free because children don't often follow world events.

Originally posted by Tonio


My theory? Human history is filled with crime and war. But we didn't always have newspapers, radio, television and the Internet supplying us with a constant diet of bad news. Also, I think we remember our childhoods as largely trouble-free because children don't often follow world events.

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Well, I'm only partly thinking about MY childhood. And it's possible that our world is filled with troubling issues because the media over-reports them. But I don't think so. We didn't have drug gangs in our neighborhood - I didn't go to school to see a kid hanging from the baseball field backstop, and we didn't hold funerals for kids in school - that were *murdered*. I didn't see kids on milk cartons as a kid. Our neighbors knew one another. Most of my friends in school had parents who stayed together - and are STILL together, in old age. To even HEAR of a teacher having their tires slashed was shocking to us - now, we deal with them getting the crap kicked out them - if they're lucky.

I really could go on - but see, it wasn't because of world events - it was what went on IN MY SCHOOL, in my neighborhood. Don't you remember the shock that some of the first serial killers provoked? This stuff is practically routine nowadays. I do think we've created a more selfish society, and sometime in our lifetimes or another generation or two, another will supplant it, one that isn't so self-destructive.

What gets me is that most of these "It's my body to do with what I please" are the first ones to go clamoring for public funds to help them when they screw themselves up. You can't force anyone to wear a condom, that would be wrong. But those who get AIDS and their supporters sure demand that the government take care of them.

You can't tell people to wear helmets, not drink and drive, abuse drugs, etc., but whoa-be the government official who says "Hey, you made your bed, you sleep in it." That would be uncaring.