8/21/2005
RIGHT BACK AT YOU
There’s a column in the Toronto Sun which nails the mess Western society is in:
The social contract between the governed and the government, between authority and citizenry, has become degraded and unbalanced. Instead of asking what our duty or responsibility might be in any given situation, we demand to know what are our privileges and rights.
At its most obvious there is the usual list of standard demands. The right to marry whomever you want, the right to be ordained a priest when you don’t qualify, the right to claim welfare even if it isn’t deserved, the right to have sex with anyone and everyone, the right to die, the right to be wrong.
The list goes on: The right to swear, the right to defy righteous authority, the right to be publicly uncouth, the right to insult a cop, the right to hide behind any excuse to escape punishment, the right to never fail, never lose, never have one’s self-esteem challenged, the right to be wrong.
He forgot to mention “the right to never be confronted with an opinion differing from our own” as one of the rights we seem to insist upon, but otherwise, good show.
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Yes. Clearly, the best thing would be to go back to the time when marriages were arranged, there was only one Church to ordain priests, and children of unwed mothers starved on the street. It would be better if sex outside of marriage, public cursing, and talking back to one’s parents were once again punishable by death.
I’m not saying that I approve of the extent to which we’ve extended individual entitlement (a tide I see reversing itself in recent years). But this article is a screed against liberal society - the very source of the freedoms that make Western civilizaion what it is.
Comment by Dave — 8/21/2005 @ 7:43 pm
Yeah. The more I reread this, the more I see things they way you describe and not the way I reacted to it at first. I’ve been trapped by binary thinking lately; it’s a peculiar intellectual hazard of mine.
I don’t think that the only option is to go back to a rigidly regimented society. I think it would help if we all started thinking a little more about the effects of our actions, and if we started applying some subtle social pressure to the unusually piggish.
Comment by Mark Hasty — 8/21/2005 @ 9:30 pm
I agree with your comment more than your post, Mark — I still believe (however naively) that our inalienable rights have been given us by the Creator, and that our government by/of/for the people derives its just power from our mutual consent.
And the Golden Rule applies more and more the more I think about it — it’s just about the simplest, neatest, most effective bit of moral philosophy I can think of. And I think part of being an engaged member of a free society is the exertion of social pressure on the “unusually piggish”, or whoever doesn’t go along with the mores we have established as being collectively valued.
Comment by Vidiot — 8/22/2005 @ 12:18 am
I’d agree about the “unusually piggish” bit. But that has to go not only for those who want to abuse our society’s tolerance and generosity, but also for those who shun their responsibilities to their fellow men and who abuse their power to the detriment of others.
The exurban SUV-driver who demands lower gas taxes (even if that money is desperately needed for maintaining urban infrastructure) is just as bad as the welfare mom who doesn’t make an effort to find a job or stop having kids at the state’s expense. Both are abusing the social contract.
And Mark, you couldn’t be more right about the refusing to “ever be confronted with an opinion differing from our own” bit - that’s the most disturbing aspect of the current political debate (or lack thereof).
Comment by Dave — 8/23/2005 @ 1:14 pm
I’d like to add one other thing - the main reason that we focus on the Welfare mom and not the Hummer owner is because we associate wealth with virtue.
The Puritan Ethic: 350 years of crapping on the little guy.
Comment by Dave — 8/23/2005 @ 1:19 pm