MAKING MORALITY POLITICAL

In the opening scene of Sex, Lies, and Video-Tapes Andie MacDowell ponders for her psychiatrist the fate of a trash-filled barge cruising the high seas in search of a friendly port-of-call--a mental voyage that steers her thoughts away from a troubled marriage. In similar fashion the new electronic decalogue focuses attention on large political issues and thus allows people to ignore problems closer to home.

This new ethic puts the ego right where it wants to be--center stage. It is an ethic that demands virtually nothing of the individual and transforms matters of moral import into either personal choices or political causes. It is an ethic that turns on its head the notion that morality primarily concerns personal obligations toward others. It is an ethic that becomes tongue-tied when asked to produce a single non-political imperative that might inconvenience the practitioner--an ethic whose most significant personal prohibitions forbid self-hatred and the “imposition” of values. In other words, a person is commanded to “like himself,” no matter what, and to make sure that he doesn’t disturb the serenity of individuals whose actions would warrant censure in a morally serious culture.

A clear example of this shift from the personal to the political can been seen on an old PBS series entitled Ethics in America. These programs, aired initially in 1989, encouraged journalists, government officials, and other professionals to tussle with their consciences and an adversarial moderator while addressing various hypothetical situations. The first in this series, Do Unto Others, featured such luminaries as Justice Antonia Scalia, C. Everett Koop, and journalist Linda Ellerbe. During this program Ms. Ellerbe refused time and again to make onerous moral demands on persons involved in personal malfeasance. Concerning a young man who, with his friends, cheated on a college entrance exam, Ms. Ellerbe stated, “No, I don't believe you should turn in the other students.” About telling her friend, Carol, that her husband was cheating on her, she commented, “Are you certain she has a right to know? There's a right to innocence.” Concerning the same unfaithful man's affair with a 15-year-old girl, she observed: “This is tough. . . . I wish I had the answer to this. I don't.”

Finally, however, Ms. Ellerbe's moral juices were stimulated when she decried the judgments other panelists were making on a man panhandling for booze. Indignant at last, Ms. Ellerbe said, “The man needs a drink. . . . I would also give money to defeat the policies of the government that wants to use our money for defense weapons instead of funding houses for these people. . . . It's not up to me to judge how the man is going to spend the money any more than it is to judge how the man got there . . . if I've got fifty cents he can have it.” In Ms. Ellerbe's moral universe, cheating, lying, and adultery are nothing to get very upset about, and moral judgments directed toward individuals are verboten. But political matters constitute an arena in which nuclear rhetoric is permitted and moral judgment comes easy as pie.

According to this popular perspective--as rock, rap, and heavy metal songs declare unremittingly--world problems, as well as my own personal problems, are basically “their” fault. If I behave immorally, it's nobody else's business. But if there's blame to be borne, society and government must take the rap. Politicians and moralistic adults are the only appropriate targets for judgment--not me, my friends, or immoral individuals. This point of view is so pervasive that it is difficult to find any rock or teen-directed pop songs in which singers scrutinize their own actions or take moral responsibility upon themselves. Jimmy Buffet's “Margaritaville” was the only pathetic example I and a class of high school seniors could think of.

Under the canons of this new electronic ethic, moral stature comes cheaply. One need only attend concerts in support of media-approved causes and wear a ribbon. The trouble involved pales in comparison with the feeling of moral superiority it brings. After all, it's not like anyone is expected to give up anything or to suffer. As Van Halen's video, Right Now, suggests, it's always some old dude's fault.

WHO OWNS YOUR BODY? JOHN STOSSEL VERSUS JOHN LOCKE

“It all comes down to one simple question: Who owns your body, you or the government?” That’s the bottom-line question that John Stossel poses in “Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.”

Stossel’s libertarian viewpoint is that you own your body and should have a right to put your parts on an organ market if you wish. The other side of the same coin says that government should butt out of transactions freely entered into by consenting adults. Accordingly, ABC’s 20/20 co-host quotes a patient needing a kidney transplant as follows: “If I make a deal with you, why is it the government’s business?”

The rest of Stossel’s utilitarian argument notes that 6,000 persons die every year while languishing on a wait-list that’s 30,000 names long. If pure capitalism can reduce that number significantly, then why not put kidneys on a commodities board alongside pork bellies and soybeans?

Before getting carried away with the notion that “the market” is the answer to every question, it would be wise to note that more fundamental building blocks stand at the base of American institutions and society—including an ethic that embraces those “unalienable rights” listed in the Declaration of Independence.

According to that document these rights come from a “Creator” and, as such, are not subject to contractual alienation. Thus, while a person can agree to work for another individual for nine dollars an hour, he can’t sell himself into slavery—not even for nine hundred thousand dollars. (In this case, of course, philosophy preceded its historical realization.) Likewise, under the doctrine of unalienable rights, individuals aren’t permitted to put their lives on the trading block, no matter what the incentives.

(Readers might recall the 2001 case where a fellow in Germany consented to be cannibalized—a contract that was discounted entirely by a retrial judge who in May upped the "Rotenburg cannibal's" 2004 sentence from eight years to life in prison.)

John Locke, a philosopher not known for religiosity, observed that humans are God’s “property, made to live for his, not one another’s, pleasure.” This comment, which has a distinctly creedal ring, puts one’s body in a different class from used Hondas or laptop computers. It also recognizes the indissoluble bond that exists between body and soul—a bond that is obscured when one reduces the former to a piece of real estate marketable by a disembodied agent.

The effects of a kidney exchange wouldn’t stop with eyes and other organs. Such markets would also alter our basic notions of who we are. The idea that life is “unalienable” has already been drastically undermined by legally transforming unwanted babies in utero into valueless appendages. The notion that human life is a sacred gift will surely collapse once the vessel within which and by which that life exists is treated as a rack of meat. Indeed, if one’s own body is imagined thus, how much less respect will individuals have for strange cuts of beef?

Book Review: IN DEFENSE OF HYPOCRISY by Jeremy Lott

If “patriotism” is the last refuge of scoundrels, “hypocrisy” is surely their first, second, and third hiding place. Nowadays, it isn’t being hypocritical that provides safe haven for unvirtuous folk but rather the practice of pinning the label on others. When it comes to sleaze, the best defense is a good offense.

Jeremy Lott’s literary response to this orgy of blame-shifting is to expose the duplicity of accusers and to argue that hypocrisy isn’t as bad as most folks think. Indeed, the author even shows how the much-maligned characteristic can create positive outcomes.

Lott’s first case in point concerns the hypocrisy charge giddily leveled against Bill Bennett when political opponents discovered that the former Secretary of Education was a high-stakes gambler. Critics were indignant that a man who presumed to tell others about virtue was engaging in a putative vice.

Instead of directing scorn at Bennett, Lott focuses attention on the duplicity of his critics—folks who ignored the fact that Bennett had never criticized gambling per se and that his moral perspective was broadly consistent with Catholic teaching on the subject. Lott also notes that these anti-moralists exaggerated their personal objections to gaming while abandoning their very real convictions about privacy rights—all in order to skewer a political opponent. An awful lot of hypocrisy, in other words, was involved in these charges of “hypocrisy” lodged against Bennett.

Lott’s remarks about Howard Dean, on the other hand, show how an individual can deliver the most damning moral judgments while claiming not to be morally judgmental. “Look, we’re not going to stoop to this kind of divisiveness,” Dean said to Tim Russert after observing that Tom Delay should resign from Congress and serve his (nonexistent) jail sentence in Houston.

As these examples indicate, the anecdote is Lott’s preferred method of inquiry. Using this technique the author comments on, among others, Newt Gingrich, Michael Moore, Britney Spears, and a cast of Hollywood stars. Special attention is lavished upon Casablanca’s Captain Renault and the sham revivalist played by Steve Martin in Leap of Faith. Unfortunately, Lott’s book is longer on examples than on systematic analysis.

Little attention, for example, is given to the proper (or traditional) definition of the word “hypocrisy.” That classic definition (as illustrated in the Oxford English Dictionary) focuses primarily on pretended virtue—not, as is common today, on failing to live up to the standards one professes. While Lott acknowledges the former definition, he effectively dismisses it by observing that distinctions having to do with motives and moral weakness make identifying hypocrisy “a mysterious, almost occult activity.”

Consistent with this definitional lassitude, Lott throws into his inquiry any permutation of deceit that strikes his fancy—keeping vices private, being polite, protecting state secrets, being inconsistent, obeying unwritten (as opposed to written) rules, and lying in order to protect innocent victims from tyrants. Nor are these variegated activities analyzed systematically. Instead, the author alternately condemns and defends a concept that has been stretched beyond recognition. Thus, Lott says near the end of the chapter on Bill Bennett, “…the whole episode was shot through with hypocrisy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

A more careful presentation might have focused on the reason that Francois De La Rochefoucauld’s 17th century view of hypocrisy (“the tribute that vice pays to virtue”) strikes many people today as odd. It might have noted that modern societies, suffused with existentialist clichés, no longer presuppose the objective view of virtue that informed the French nobleman’s dictum. In its place stand only personal beliefs to which one may, or may not, be true. Consequently, consistency and authenticity are prized above any “real” morality. Being “true to oneself” or “to one’s own beliefs” is cherished—not being, or pretending to be, virtuous. In such a context, Jesus’ admonition to his disciples to follow the Pharisees’ teachings, but not their deeds, has little resonance. What does resonate in modern ears is that gladly misconstrued injunction, “Judge not!” (I should note that Lott offers some helpful exegetical remarks on the aforementioned biblical passages.)

This philosophical retreat from objective morality also explains why those who vociferously denounce hypocrisy are pleased with a “saint or shut up” standard for moral discourse—a rule that creates a society in which, as Lott rightly observes, morality is easily “shouted down.” Such ground rules also satisfy the druthers of those who seek social transformation via political means. Indeed, both neo-Marxists and mall-rat Sartreans are happy to embrace the popular proviso that allows anyone to denounce the personal foibles of moralists—and moralists alone.

One can at least be grateful for the insights that In Defense of Hypocrisy does contain. Despite the fact that it is neither topically focused nor philosophically sophisticated, the book does serve to undermine the popular presumption that hypocrisy (broadly defined) is the worst of all moral failings and to point readers in another direction. What exactly that direction might be is material for another book.

ACADEMICS AND LINGUISTIC OBFUSCATION

My favorite example of academic pretense involves a spoof instigated in 1996 by Dr. Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University.

Sokal was concerned that a good deal of what passes for scholarly discourse in the humanities was nothing more than leftist politics gussied up in ostentatious language. So the good professor proceeded to put together an article comprised mostly of gibberish but punctuated with assertions that would warm the hearts of partisan intellectuals.

The title of this piece was “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” Its thesis was that gravity was merely a social construct arising from phallocentric hegemony.

Sokal submitted the article to a prominent, peer-reviewed journal, Social Text, whose editorial board was sympathetic to its warrantless conclusion: “the content and methodology of post-modern science provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project.” Not entirely to Sokal’s surprise, the article was published.

Not long ago I was reminded of Sokal’s ruse when I attended a seminar at a local university. The “topic” was the loosely-defined discipline of phenomenology. It was easy to see, at least for someone with more than a layman’s knowledge of philosophy, that most of the professional energy going into this enterprise was devoted to verbally decorating a few unspectacular ideas.

One after another, speakers put forward syntactically complex propositions shrouded in jargon (“intertextual narratology”) and punctuated with leftist dogma (e.g. using the word “fascist” to describe any position to their political right). Two-dozen adults were pretending (not very well) to congratulate each other on their brilliance while painfully enduring one plodding presentation after another.

The obvious value of using words only a few folks understand is that the practice gives initiates a sense of superiority over the hoi polloi (the masses). The practice thus fosters the illusion that jargonistas possess insights that extend far beyond those of Joe Sixpack, Bonnie Businesswoman, or Peter Politician.

Like the Gnostics of old, for whom the secret word Abraxis held the key to reality, these pitiful polymaths are unwilling to present ideas without linguistic enhancements. They pretend, instead, that intellectual precision requires them to speak as they do.

Hollywood actors, deprived of makeup, don’t look so hot. Similarly, plain speech makes many ideas seem awfully quotidian (i.e. ordinary)—even refutable. Clarity of speech also raises unpleasant questions—like why we pay handsome salaries to folks whose words represent little more than Marxism in post-modern terminological drag.

One of my best graduate-school teachers, Ivor Leclerc, was a model of clarity. He castigated instructors (especially theologians) for employing muddled jargon. Sokal’s article would never have passed muster with him, nor would he have been caught dead pretending that a tarted up pig was a white stallion. Such pretense is pervasive, however, among academic Wizards of Oz who hide behind the smoke and mirrors of superfluous neologistry (i.e. unnecessary, made-up words).

GODLESS: THE CHURCH OF LIBERALISM

What’s most amazing about Ann Coulter’s book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, is the amount of intellectual meat she packs into 281 breezy, barb-filled pages. Among the topics the blonde bomb-thrower discusses in some depth are the following: liberal jurisprudence, privacy rights and abortion, Joe Wilson’s modest career and inflated ego, and the solid record of failure in American public schools. The topics of Intelligent Design and Darwinism, to which the last eighty pages of text are devoted, are analyzed in even greater detail.

As one would expect from an author with a legal background, Supreme Court cases are high on Coulter’s hit-list—especially the idea of a “living Constitution.” Citing various cases-in-point, Coulter shows that this popular doctrine is nothing more than a paralegal pretext for making the Constitution say whatever liberal judges want it to say. Though such a philosophy grants to the nation’s founding document all the integrity of a bound and gagged assault victim, it at least has the virtue of mirroring liberals’ self-referential view of morality.

Another dogma that Coulter skewers is the liberal commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Punish the Perp.” This counterintuitive principle not only rejects the link between incarceration and lower crime rates, it also permits benevolent judges (like Clinton federal court nominee Frederica Massiah-Jackson) to shorten the sentence of child rapists so that other innocent children can pay the price for society’s sins.

An unexpected bonus in this chapter is the author’s extended sidebar on Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of Boston who, as his own correspondence shows, knew Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty but chose, for ideological and financial reasons, to portray them as innocent victims. In a related chapter, “The Martyr: Willie Horton,” Coulter provides detailed information about Horton’s crimes, Michael Dukakis’ furlough program, and the precise nature of the Horton ads aired in the 1988 presidential campaign

Continuing the religious imagery, Coulter asserts in chapter five that abortion is the “holiest sacrament” of the “church of liberalism.” For women this sacrament secures their “right to have sex with men they don’t want to have children with.” A corollary of this less-than-exalted principle is the right to suck the brains out of partially born infants. How far liberal politicians will go to safeguard this sacrament whose name must not be spoken (Euphemisms are “choice,” “reproductive freedom,” and “family planning.”) is shown by an amendment offered by Senator Chuck Schumer that would exclude anti-abortion protestors from bankruptcy protection. How low these same pols will go is illustrated by the character assassination of Judge Charles Pickering—a man honored by the brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers but slimed by liberals at his confirmation hearing as racially insensitive. Coulter notes that the unspoken reason for this “Borking” of Pickering was the judge’s prior criticism of Roe v. Wade.

The single chapter that Coulter’s critics have honed in on is the one that exposes the liberal “Doctrine of Infallibility.” This religiously resonant phrase applies to individuals who promote the Left’s partisan agenda while immunizing themselves from criticism by touting their victim-status. In addition to the 9/11 “Jersey Girls,” Coulter identifies Joe Wilson, Cindy Sheehan, Max Cleland, and John Murtha as persons who possess, at least by Maureen Dowd’s lights, “absolute moral authority.” Curiously, this exalted status isn’t accorded victims who don’t push liberal agendas. Perhaps the fact that Republican veterans outnumber their Democrat counterparts in Congress, 87 to 62, has something to do with this inconsistency.

Coulter’s next chapter, “The Liberal Priesthood: Spare the Rod, Spoil the Teacher,” focuses on the partisanship, compensation, and incompetence level of American teachers. A crucial statistic in these pages concerns the “correlation [that exists] between poor student achievement and time spent in U.S. public schools.” Comments by Thomas Sowell and Albert Shanker also stand out. Sowell notes that college students with low SAT and ACT scores are more likely to major in education and that “teachers who have the lowest scores are the most likely to remain in the profession.” From a different perspective, the late President of the American Federation of Teachers stated, with refreshing bluntness, “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.” The words of John Dewey, a founder of America’s public education system, also fit nicely into Coulter’s state-of-the-classroom overview: “You can’t make Socialists out of individualists—children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.” Coulter responds, “You also can’t make socialists out of people who can read, which is probably why Democrats think the public schools have nearly achieved Aristotelian perfection.”

The last third of Godless focuses on matters scientific. Chapter seven, “The Left’s War on Science,” serves as an appetizer for Coulter’s evolutionary piece de resistance. Prior to that main course, Coulter provides a litany of examples that illustrate the left’s contempt for scientific data that doesn’t comport with its worldview. Exhibits include the mendacious marketing of AIDS as an equal opportunity disease, the hysterical use of anecdotal evidence to ban silicon breast implants, and the firestorm arising from Lawrence Summer’s heretical speculation about male and female brain differences.

The remaining chapters of Godless all deal with Darwinism. Nowhere else can one find a tart-tongued compendium of information that not only presents a major argument for intelligent design but also exposes the blatant dishonesty of “Darwiniacs” who continue to employ evidence (such as the Miller-Urey experiment, Ernst Haeckel’s embryo drawings, and the famous peppered moth experiment) that they know is outdated or fraudulent.

Within this bracing analysis, Coulter employs the observations of such biological and philosophical heavyweights as Stephen Gould, Richard Lewontin, Richard Dawkins, Michael Behe, and Karl Popper. The price of the whole book is worth the information contained in these chapters about the statistical improbability of random evolution, the embarrassing absence of “transitional” fossils, and the inquisitorial attitude that prevails among many scientists (and most liberals) when discussing these matters. Unlike biologist Richard Lewontin, who candidly admits that a prior commitment to materialism informs his allegiance to evolution, most of his colleagues (and certainly most of the liberal scribblers Coulter sets on the road to extinction) won’t concede that Darwinism is a corollary, rather than a premise, of their godlessness.

Coulter’s final chapter serves as a thought-provoking addendum to her searing cross-examination of evolution’s star witnesses. “The Aped Crusader” displays the devastating social consequences that have thus far attended Darwinism. From German and American eugenicists (including Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger), to Aryan racists, to the infanticidal musings of Princeton’s Peter Singer, Darwinian evolution boasts a political and philosophical heritage that could only be envied by the likes of Charles Manson. Yet it is a history ignored by liberals for whom Darwin’s theory provides what they want above all else—a creation myth that sanctifies their sexual urges, sanctions abortion, and disposes of God.

Coulter’s book is clearly not a systematic argument for the idea that liberalism is a godless religion. Indeed, prior to the material on evolution, the concept is treated more as a clever theme for chapter headings than as a serious intellectual proposition. In those final chapters, however, Coulter manages to present a cogent, sustained argument that actually begins to link modern liberalism (or more specifically, leftism) to an atheistic perspective. At the very least Coulter succeeds in raising an important issue—namely, that American courts currently ignore the religious or quasi-religious character of a philosophy that pervades public institutions and is propagated with public funds. This fact, if honestly recognized, would render contemporary church-state jurisprudence untenable. The Court would have to recognize, as a clever man once said, that the elimination of metaphysics equals a metaphysic of elimination. Put more simply, judges would have to come to terms with the fact that every philosophy, including “liberalism,” swims in the same intellectual current as religion.

Thus far, the mainstream media have focused almost all their attention on Coulter’s take-no-prisoners rhetorical style—and particularly on the “insensitive” remarks about those 9/11 widows who seem to be “enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.” Clearly, diplomatic language is not Coulter’s forte, as one would also gather from this representative zinger: “I don’t particularly care if liberals believe in God. In fact, I would be crestfallen to discover any liberals in heaven.”

What undercuts the liberals’ case against Coulter, however, is their own (not always tacit) endorsement of vile epithets that are regularly directed against President Bush and his supporters by the likes of Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, and a gaggle of celebrity politicos. Coulter employs the same linguistic standard against liberals (with a touch of humor) that they regularly use (with somber faces and dogmatic conviction) when they accuse conservatives of being racist homophobes who gladly send youngsters to war under false pretences to line the pockets of Halliburton. Hate-speech of this stripe is old-hat for leftists.

Until Air America, Helen Thomas, and most Democrat constituencies alter their rhetoric, I see no reason for conservatives to denounce Coulter for using, more truthfully, the same harsh language that leftists have employed, with no regard for accuracy, since the time of Lenin. When liberals denounce communist tyrants as fervently as they do real Nazis, then it will be time for Coulter to cool the rhetoric. Until that time her “verbal reprisals” serve a useful function within an intellectual marketplace that resembles a commodities pit more than a debating society.

THE PROFESSORS by DAVID HOROWITZ et al

Slogging through The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America is a bit like taking in the Interstate scenery between Abilene and El Paso—a whole lot of the same thing. Orchestrated by David Horowitz and largely carried out by an ensemble of assistants, this book consists, in large measure, of a succession of ideological portraits culled from campuses across the country. Profiles of anti-American Marxists who employ classrooms to advance their radical social agenda are interrupted by profiles of anti-American queer theorists, anti-Semitic Islamists, and anti-Caucasian racists who all exhibit contempt for ideas other than their own. Amid the mind-numbing repetitiveness of this serial critique of academic bigotry and incompetence, a few cases do stand out.

Take, for example, Bernardine Dohrn and her husband Bill Ayers. Dohrn is a law professor at Northwestern, while Ayers holds the title “Distinguished Professor” at the University of Illinois, Chicago. In their youth both joined the Weatherman underground, a group that “managed to bomb the U.S. Capitol building, New York City Police Headquarters, the Pentagon, and the National Guard offices in Washington, D.C.”

Far from being on the periphery of this organization, Dohrn and Ayers were active members. Indeed, both were pursued by the FBI throughout the 70s. According to a Horowitz researcher, only a “technicality” for improper surveillance prevented the pair from receiving serious jail time for their crimes. Moreover, neither professor has denounced the activities they supported years ago.

Of his bomb-detonating days Ayers commented, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” That comment, ironically enough, was published by the New York Times in the edition that was delivered to the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Dohrn, by contrast, claimed to be “joking” when she celebrated the brutal Sharon Tate murders that were carried out by members of Charles Manson’s clan: “Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!” This same person now directs the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern and spends her professional time, along with her husband, working to prevent the punishment of violent juvenile offenders.

Then there is the inventor of Kwanzaa, Professor Ron Karenga. In 1971, Karenga and two other members of his “United Slaves” organization were convicted of felonious assault and false imprisonment. Karenga, who bestowed the title “Maulana” or “Master Teacher” upon himself, spent four years in prison for these crimes before being released in 1975. This resume blemish didn’t prevent Karenga from securing a faculty appointment at San Diego State University shortly thereafter. In 1979 Karenga moved to Cal State Long Beach where, in 1989, he was named head of the Black Studies Department. That’s an amazing career track--fourteen years from prison inmate to department head of a state university!

(Meshing nicely with this case of affirmative action for criminals, researcher Thomas Ryan notes that Kwanzaa’s seven principles are the same principles embraced by the Symbionese Liberation Army—the domestic terrorist group that kidnapped Patricia Hearst in 1974 and employed a seven-headed snake to symbolize their collectivist philosophy.)

Having run for vice-president on the party’s ticket in 1980 and ’84, Angela Davis is probably the most famous Communist now teaching on American campuses. But she is surely the only “University Professor” in the University of California system who boasts that title despite a complete absence of serious scholarship. Davis does, of course, possess the distinction of fleeing from the FBI and being tried for involvement in a 1970 plot to free her imprisoned lover—a Black Panther awaiting trial for murder. This plot resulted in the death of four people, including Judge Harold Haley, whose “head was blown off by a sawed-off shotgun owned by Professor Davis.” Davis, however, acting as her own lawyer to avoid cross-examination, was found not guilty of the conspiracy charges against her—thus setting the stage for the honors that were lavished upon her by both the Soviet Union (the International Lenin Peace Prize) and the University of California system.

Horowitz’s well-written introductory chapter contains the most egregious example of academic preferences for imprisoned radicals. That case concerns Susan Rosenberg, who, in the fall of 2004, was invited to join the faculty of Hamilton College as a “Visiting Professor.” Twenty years earlier Rosenberg, another member of the Weatherman underground, had been apprehended and sentenced to 58 years in prison for helping move hundreds of pounds of explosives into a New Jersey warehouse. A midnight pardon issued by Bill Clinton, however, made all the difference between doing time in a federal prison and teaching a course on “Resistance Memoirs” to students at Hamilton.

Rosenberg’s invitation to Hamilton was only withdrawn when a student, Ian Mandel, brought intense public scrutiny to her background—a history that also included an indictment for the murder of two Nyack, New Jersey police officers whose memorial stood a mile from Mandel’s home. As if to indicate their contempt for public standards of decency, the Hamilton organization responsible for inviting a convicted terrorist to the faculty followed that fiasco with a speaking invitation to Ward Churchill—an offer that was reluctantly rescinded after Churchill’s “little Eichmanns” comment about the innocent victims of 9/11 was publicized.

The conclusion one must draw from such examples isn’t that every institution has its bad apples but rather that, at least in the liberal arts in America, moral turpitude and political hucksterism pervades higher education. Radical criminals with questionable academic credentials flourish in a milieu that bristles with hostility toward real scholars who don’t toe the party line—witness the case of former Harvard President Lawrence Summers.

Individuals with prison records or FBI rap sheets don’t get into major educational institutions because they fudge their resumes. They get in because they share the political dogmas of those who hire them—and they flourish for the same reason. Angela Davis isn’t a “University Professor” because of her scholarship. She is there because of her politics.

What The Professors ultimately reveals isn’t a list of instructors that students can avoid, but a corrupt, politicized system that has contempt for the very idea of liberal education.

THE DA VINCI CODE: IT'S NOT "JUST A MOVIE"

“It’s just a movie.” That’s the nonchalant retort that elites employ to mollify people who object to the venomous calumnies that are directed against the Catholic Church in Dan Brown’s now-it-is, now-it-isn’t fictional story, The Da Vinci Code.

It’s curious how this sophisticated observation is only employed when a movie offends certain sensibilities. No critic, for example, would have thought to downplay the significance of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ by saying, “It’s just a movie.” On the contrary, indignant commentary alleging anti-Semitism was ubiquitous.

Likewise, when United 93 was released, the mainstream media were atwitter with angst over whether Americans were “ready” for the film. No one, to my knowledge, pooh-poohed this psychologizing based on the fact that United 93 was “just a movie.” (Not surprisingly, no traumatological speculation has accompanied Oliver Stone’s soon-to-be-released 9/11 flick.)

Apparently there’s an unwritten rule for invoking the “It’s just a movie” clause that limits its use to scripts that slander military officials (JFK) and Christians or glamorize depravity (Pulp Fiction). In the unlikely event that a movie portrayed some Jesse Jackson double in a less-than-sympathetic light, one can be sure that industry flacks would never let these same words fall from their lips.

That little word “just”—as movie moguls prove when they tout their Brokeback achievements at award ceremonies—is a lie. Film, television, and other media shape public sensibilities—a point Plato made long ago when he discussed the impact that arts have upon character. “In music…lawlessness easily creeps in unseen…in the form of play, when it seems likely to do no harm.” Cultural elites know the power of mass communication—but deny it selectively.

Imagine a movie in which a priest is mysteriously murdered at Lincoln Center. As he dies he shreds his robe suggestively over a CBS camera. Subsequently, a polymath professor, dismissed from a prominent Catholic University for having anti-abortion views, begins to put together, at his great peril, the pieces of a vast, left-wing conspiracy.

The CBS eye turns out to be the symbol for an elite group that shapes public opinion by manipulating media messages. Moreover, this cocktail-swishing coven has a pedigree that extends through Jean-Paul Sartre and Sigmund Freud to the Marquis de Sade. Its ultimate goal is the destruction of the Judeo-Christian conscience that has informed Western society for the last 1500 years.

You can create the climax of your choice for this whodunit. But you can’t imagine any critic saying of such a film, “It’s just a movie.” Instead, this slick flick would be vilified as the paranoid fantasy of a mentally deranged individual with lifetime memberships in both the NRA and 700 Club.

Secular critics don’t pretend that movies of this sort are unimportant. They only pretend when movies vilify people or institutions that they hate.

IS EVERYONE SELFISH?

“Everyone’s selfish.” That’s the commercial wisdom that’s been pounded into morally flaccid skulls over the last few decades. The recently departed Libertarian presidential candidate, Harry Browne, even placed this very popular idea into an essay that graces a popular ethics anthology. The article was named, “The Unselfishness Trap.”

According to this revisionist logic, people who do what they want to do are selfish. And since everyone—Pope Benedict, Donald Trump, and Richard “the shoebomber” Reid—does what he wants, everyone is selfish.

It’s a clever rhetorical sleight of hand that manages to overturn, without further ado, two thousand years of moral reasoning that portrayed selfishness as a grave vice. Now, armed with this cheaply attained insight, conspicuous consumers and media narcissists are able to dismiss the trait as an empty label that moralists attach to actions they disapprove. At least that’s the conclusion Harry and company came to after five minutes of not-so-strenuous philosophical lifting.

Getting folks to think seriously about morality is, indeed, a daunting task—especially in a culture where individuals are inundated with messages designed to reinforce their worst impulses. “No rules, just right.” “Obey your thirst.” “Just do it.” “You’ve got to make yourself happy first.”

Anyone who can’t spot the flaw in the aforementioned selfishness argument would do well to begin a rigorous moral exercise program—say, ten pages of Aristotle, Augustine, or Aquinas a day. Heck, you can throw in Confucius or the Tao-Te Ching for diversity’s sake.

The mistake that modern rationalizers make is to define selfishness as “doing what you want to do.” This is not, and never has been, the definition of selfishness. (Indeed, for Aristotle the very definition of a virtuous individual is a person who both does and wants to do what is right.) Instead of “doing what you want,” selfishness is properly defined as the quality exhibited by those who focus inordinately on their own interests—and act accordingly. Selfish people, in other words, regularly fail to look at things through the eyes of others.

By introducing a bogus definition of the word “selfish,” revisionists succeed in undermining the concept itself. For if every single action is selfish, then the phrase “acting selfishly” is transformed into a useless redundancy.

An embarrassing question that arises from this short analysis is this: Which persons and groups are most anxious to do away with the concept of selfishness? It doesn’t take a media genius to figure that one out.

A final question takes this form: Why do contemporary Americans so easily confuse rational self-interest, willing acts of sacrificial love, and craven egotism? The answer, I think, is that people who are brazenly superficial and stunningly narcissistic prefer to employ moral mirrors that are thoroughly muddled.

ORLANDO PATTERSON AND THE "COOL-POSE" BLACK CULTURE

Orlando Patterson recently dropped an ideological stink bomb on his chums at the New York Times. In an article published March 26th, the Harvard sociologist notes not only the “disconnect” that exists between “millions of black youths” and “the American mainstream,” but also “the failure of social scientists to adequately explain the problem.”

This failure, according to Patterson, has been caused by “a deep-seated dogma that has prevailed in social science and policy circles since the mid-1960’s.” That dogma rejected “any explanation that invokes a group’s cultural attributes” and focused instead on “structural factors like low incomes, joblessness, poor schools and bad housing.”

Translating socio-speak into plain English, Patterson is saying that his professional colleagues have been unwilling to admit that a corrupt subculture has had a devastating impact on millions of young black males. Instead, academics have put all their analytical eggs in economic baskets that exclude the domain of morality.

To the chagrin of ivory tower Marxists, Patterson observes that “countless studies… have found that poor schools, per se, do not explain why after 10 years of education a young man remains illiterate.” Nor do they explain why young black females do so much better than their male counterparts.

What does explain this phenomenon is the group approval given to young males who assert their manhood by shunning literacy, assuming a “cool-pose” persona, and engaging in acts of two-bit bravado. In Patterson’s words, “For these young men, it was almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture...”

Despite these insights, Patterson isn’t yet prepared to jump professional ship and devotes much of his time taking back with the left hand what the right hand had given. Thomas Sowell, a scholar not subject to the blacklisting pressure that permeates most campuses, fingers more forthrightly the “redneck” culture that is ruining the lives of many young blacks—a culture whose roots run back to the very non-black borderland between England and Scotland.

If Patterson and his cohorts had the courage of a Bill Cosby, their analyses wouldn’t tiptoe around an issue that is obvious to anyone with a modicum of sense and the courage to report what should be obvious to anyone: Subcultures that glorify violence, indolence, and promiscuity affect youngsters every bit as much as vicious racist stereotypes or economic hardship.

The problem with most sociologists isn’t a paucity of data but a lack of backbone. They are loath to criticize the pimps in the music and entertainment industry lest they offend powerful political and cultural play’rs whose power grows in tandem with black degradation.

Senator Daniel Moynihan once remarked, regretfully, that there’s good money to be made in bad schools. The same sociological insight applies to a corrupt subculture.

UNITED 93: STANDING UP FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN?

According to one voice on a radio promo for United 93, the film is about “standing up for what you believe in.” I can hardly imagine a more inane—even if thoroughly predictable—statement.

I know that moral illiteracy pervades this country far more than the substantial illiteracy of letters. Still, I would have thought that some measure of care would have been given to a statement that describes the import of what the passengers did on United 93. Instead, a vacuous cliché is employed to tout acts of courage performed in the service of life and decency.

Does it not occur to people who employ this ubiquitous phrase as a badge of moral distinction that the terrorists responsible for killing almost three thousand innocent people on 9/11 were also “standing up for what they believed?” Or is thirty seconds of ethical reflection too much to ask of Americans eager to equate passion and admirable behavior?

As long as we are handing out kudos for simply acting on one’s beliefs, why not give lifetime achievement awards to Joseph Stalin, Mao, Adolf Hitler, and Pol Pot. In the American division credits could go to George Wallace for standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama in definance of a federal court order giving blacks the right to attend the institution. Bull Conner might also get a “standing O” for his more forceful interventions on behalf of Jim Crow laws.

Depending on the meaning of the elastic phrase “standing up for,” one might place Timothy McVeigh in the distinguished company of persons who persist in their beliefs—no matter what.

In other words, it seems to occur to no one in the editorial business, or elsewhere, that “standing up for what you believe in” is a phrase perfectly consistent with pig-headed racism, ideological intransigence, and even mass murder.

Given these semantic shortcomings, one might ask why this phrase has become so popular with Americans. The answer, I think, is precisely because the phrase possesses no moral content whatsoever. Consequently, it can be employed to sanction whatever course of action anyone happens to pursue—provided the person “embraces” that act.

Thus, immoral scumbags like Howard Stern are now praised for “honesty” while the once-loathsome word, “shameless,” is consigned to the dustbin of cultural history. Gone is the incomprehensible aphorism: “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice gives to virtue.”

Vice and virtue—there’s the rub. What many Americans want is a way of talking that dispenses with those inconvenient, judgmental terms. And making terrorists the moral equals of those who oppose them is a small price to pay for the “freedom” that is bestowed on individuals who enthusiastically embrace such language.

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS ARE HO-HUM

“She would have been a good woman,” the Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” Those were the words an escaped convict spoke over the lifeless body of a self-absorbed grandmother.

The statement in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” suggests that goodness only comes to the fore in certain people when death is staring them in the face. Were O’Connor alive today, she might have to revise that thought.

April 20th was the seventh anniversary of the day in 1999 when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed thirteen innocent people at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. This year five teenagers in rural Kansas picked that date to carry out a similar massacre. A few days later a handful of seventh-graders—yes, seventh graders—in a small Alaska community were rounded up for hatching a similar plan.

Almost as depressing as these foiled attempts at homicide were the comments that some adults made about them. One school official gave thanks that “a student felt they could talk to an adult.” The PC grammar of this benediction blends seamlessly with its presumption about kids who are reluctant to betray their peers—even those contemplating mass murder. What could be worse, after all, than being known as a snitch?

Even more discouraging was this remark made by an Alaskan police chief: “People are people. Something like this can happen anywhere…”

Unfortunately, events like this have happened throughout the United States. Last November in Campbell County, Tennessee, a fifteen-year-old shot and killed an assistant principal and wounded two others. And in March of 2005, Minnesota’s Red Lake Indian Reservation became the scene of a slaughter that left five students and two adults dead—all killed by a 16-year-old.

Other post- and pre-Columbine locations include Santee, California, Springfield, Oregon, Pearl, Mississippi, and Jonesboro, Arkansas. That partial list doesn’t include, of course, “unsuccessful” plots like those in Kansas and Alaska. .

The truly breathtaking part of the officer’s statement was his glib observation that “people are people”—as if kids randomly shooting their classmates is part of the human condition.

Are adults really so mindless as to believe this nonsense? Children in the United States weren’t turning schools into mortuaries two generations ago. Nor can one rattle off a string of cites in Japan or Italy where barely pubescent males have planned or carried out mass killings at school.

Yet faced with horrors that occur with astounding regularity, many Americans seem to have accepted barbarism as a fact of life. “People are people!” Such folks could be shot every day of their lives and still remain oblivious to the depths of the cultural depravity around them. Even mass juvenile murder is preferable to the truth.

"C" IS FOR COWARDICE

In George Clooney’s mind the history of Hollywood is a history of political courage where entertainment types lead the fight against forces of oppression. It should come as no surprise that Clooney’s self-congratulatory reconstruction of his industry’s past is as fanciful as the sets where he pretends to be persons whose insight and life experiences far surpass his own.

Race was the first topic that sprang to Clooney’s mind when he invoked Tinseltown’s glorious history. Yet Hollywood was hardly in the forefront when it came to the struggle for civil rights. Giving an Oscar to Hattie McDaniel in 1940 for playing a stereotypical “Mammy” in “Gone With the Wind” hardly qualifies as a civil rights breakthrough.

Indeed, minstrelish Stepin Fetchit stereotypes remained common, even during the 50’s and 60’s. One need only recall Amos ’n Andy or Jack Benny’s butler, Rochester, to bring to mind on-camera roles that make most folks today wince with embarrassment.

On the other hand, when it comes to dangers from abroad, show-people have a sordid record of consorting with the enemy. Lillian Hellman’s script for “Mission to Moscow,” for example, not only glorified a Soviet system that doomed millions to starvation, it even justified Stalin’s horrific purges.

This unwillingness to confront political thuggery didn’t improve during the Cold War. Serious portraits of Soviet repression, a la Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago,” are almost non-existent. Instead, Hollywood regularly put forward sympathetic portraits of a regime that was responsible for more innocent deaths than Nazi Germany. At the same time, anti-Communists were routinely vilified as deranged demagogues.

Today, Hollywood’s deeply engrained cowardice is exhibited by its consistent unwillingness to be honest about the source of global terror. A classic example of this spinelessness took place when moviemakers replaced the nuclear-armed jihadists in Tom Clancy’s book, “The Sum of All Fears,” with a gaggle of neo-Nazis.

Currently Clooney’s chums have created a piece of celluloid trash, “V for Vendetta,” that features a swashbuckling terrorist whose violence is directed against a fascistic, semi-Christian British government. A massive subway blast that takes out the buildings of Parliament to the strains of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” serves as its predictable climax. Needless to say, this romantic bomber, “V,” is the movie’s hero.

Meanwhile, the only references to Islam in this film are sympathetic. Indeed, there is even an allusion to the government’s framing some “religious extremists” for a devastating plague of its own making.

The advantage of fingering Christians and deranged conservatives as the true source of terror is that the “creative community” isn’t put in danger—like the murdered Theo van Gogh or the London commuters whose deaths in last year’s subway bombings prompted the delayed release of “V.”

So much for courage. Clooneyites can’t even face the truth when it explodes in their face.

HATING DR. LAURA

Hating Dr. Laura is a prerequisite for Americans shaped by the country’s me-first culture. For them, kicking around the popular radio host is almost as much fun as abusing the President. But what exactly do they hate?

First, they hate the way Dr. Laura holds people responsible for their own choices—even ones made when they were young and stupid. Especially irksome is that irritating observation frequently put to disgruntled wives: “You picked him.”

They hate the way the nation’s designated nag rejects convenient “I don’t know” answers and expects callers to face up to facts they’d rather forget.

They hate it when she downplays the importance of feelings and places moral obligation on a higher plain than emotion.

They hate how Dr. Laura badmouths “psychobabble” and demands that callers say what they really mean when they talk about “dealing with” their “issues.”

They hate it when Dr. Laura makes people feel bad about doing bad things.

They hate it when she turns the expectations table and asks dissatisfied female callers, “How would you like to come home to you every day?”—a query inevitably followed by an extended period of silence.

They hate it when the daily dispenser of hardcore compassion responds to “It’s so hard” whiners with the callous retort, “So what?”

They hate it when Dr. Laura answers “How do I…” questions with straightforward replies: “How do I get over the pain?” “It takes time.” “How do I stop being a complainer?” “Stop complaining.”

They hate Dr. Laura for destroying the illusion that there’s an easy way to do difficult things—for not pretending that a pill or a slick technique can undo messes and avoid hurt feelings.

They hate it when the petulant moralist employs the term “slut” or labels callers “selfish” and tells them to think about others—as if she were qualified to judge someone’s “personal value system.”

They hate the fact that Dr. Laura disparages popular ideas about “venting” and “confrontation”—concepts endorsed on TV shows where problems are resolved after shouting matches that last less than five minutes.

They hate it when she uses the term “shack-up” for relationships where couples don’t pledge to stay together “in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live”—as if their unwillingness to publicly express their commitment to each other implies a lack of commitment.

They hate it when the impertinent shrinklette exclaims, “At least a prostitute gets paid!”

They hate the fact that Dr. Laura puts the lives of children above the sex lives of adults—and that she has the audacity to suggest staying together for the sake of the kids.

They hate it when she looks at custody arrangements through the eyes of children and asks parents to imagine how their offspring feel about being shuffled back and forth and “crammed”—not “blended”—into his, hers, and ours families.

They hate that Dr. Laura dismisses the adult-centered excuse, “Kids adapt,” and has the gall to say that mothers who don’t want to raise their children shouldn’t have them.

They especially hate it when she condenses current legal reasoning on the subject of abortion into a simple, morally indefensible proposition: “If she wants it, it’s a baby. If she doesn’t, it’s not.”

They hate when she says “Hoooah”—as if soldiers make the world a better place.

And they hate it when she says, “Do the right thing,”—as if most actions aren’t gloriously gray.

Most of all they hate it when, having turned off the radio in disgust, a barely perceptible but persistent voice keeps whispering in their ears: “You know, don’t you, that what Dr. Laura just said, is right?”

AN EXTENDED ESSAY ON GAY MARRIAGE

“Why shouldn’t gays be allowed to marry?” Nowadays, the question has a prima facie persuasiveness that’s akin to the popular rhetorical challenge, “Who’s to say what’s right and wrong?” Another trait these queries share is the likelihood that persons confronting them will be reduced to stammering incoherence. The main reason for this detour into dementia isn’t that opponents of gay marriage are idiots. It is rather that the case against same-sex unions requires more strenuous philosophical lifting than the case for it.

Rhetorical Challenges

Proponents of this radical domestic innovation possess a pocketful of bumper sticker appeals--including the aforementioned “Who’s to say” argument. “It’s not fair” and “It’s discrimination” are two other easily developed themes. Then there’s the protest that people who “love each other” should be encouraged, not discouraged, to commit themselves to their male-female, male-male, or female-female partners. Why, after all, should heterosexuals who decry the social damage caused by divorce be in the business of discouraging commitment among homosexual couples? Finally, there is that familiar prosecutorial inquiry, “How does it hurt you if someone else marries a person of the same sex?” Several decades earlier Phil Donahue and his talk-show pals touted sexual license by employing similar questions: “Why would you stand in the way of someone’s happiness?” So much is presupposed in these “beating-your-wife” challenges that no simple reply is possible.

Glibly articulated sound bites work well in mass media. By contrast, when one is obliged to defend an institution that has never been challenged and ideas that have almost always been taken for granted, the speaker faces a daunting task. Quickly! Why must women marry men? Who is hurt if you let people marry whomever they want? Who made you the marriage czar?

When Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, explored the nature of justice, his arguments rested on assumptions that he shared with his interlocutors. In Book One of this extended dialogue, the impetuous Thrasymachus, after having been argued into a corner by his verbal sparring partner, rashly asserts that justice is bad and injustice good. This novel perspective, Socrates declares, makes his own task much more difficult. Most persons take for granted that justice is good and argue over its proper definition. Socrates, however, is now forced to demonstrate for his auditors something more fundamental--the superiority of justice to injustice.

Defending male-female marriage is akin to defending the value of justice over injustice. It’s seldom done, and the issues are so basic that people are inclined to fall silent. Certainly, no simple slogan serves as an adequate defense of this previously unquestioned proposition. Replying that “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” isn’t compelling--especially when addressing secular audiences inclined to equate religious faith with stupidity.

As Socrates was forced to ponder the essence of justice and injustice in response to Thrasymachus’ assertion, so advocates for the traditional definition of marriage are faced with the task of explaining to short-attention-span Americans plausible reasons why male-female unions ought to remain the norm. Those explanations, however condensed, must include an analysis of the essential nature of marriage.

Marriage: Procreation and Commitment

Marriage is a institution that ties procreation to commitment. This newly-minted but long-presupposed definition should constitute the heart of any defense of traditional marriage. For centuries marriage has revolved around pledges of loyalty made by husbands and wives to each other. “In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer” are words familiar to all Americans. Until recently the phrase “as long as you both shall live” was part of most wedding ceremonies. These vows of commitment aren’t important simply as expressions of the love that two individuals have for each other. They are also significant because marriages are consummated, and those sexual unions produce babies. Marriage, therefore, not only links two people to vows of commitment, it also links commitment to family.

Not all marriages result in children, but marriages aren’t complete--according to law and language--apart from consummation. And acts of consummation produce, for most couples, the children that Roman Catholic theology has rightly linked to acts of intercourse. Indeed, this link between consummation and reproduction is so pronounced that husbands and wives go to considerable contraceptive lengths to frustrate it. With same-sex couples the situation is reversed--and more so. Not only are biological offspring never a result of sexual intimacy, the acquisition of children is an arduous process fraught with legal hurdles. No matter how committed the parties, same-sex unions can never be linked, via consummation, to the creation of a family.

Heretofore, marriage has provided a framework, rooted in vows of commitment, for the raising of children. Though imperfectly realized, that ideal has served to sublimate--to place within the bounds of exalted purpose--mere acts of propagation. Absent this larger framework, intercourse tends to assume the raw visage of animalian instinct. C. S. Lewis once observed that a single man’s desires, freely indulged, would soon suffice to populate a small village.(1) Traditional marriage restrains such impulses because it sets forth the expectation that father and mother will provide a home for the fruit of their passion.

Same-sex marriage, by its very nature, dismisses this link between marriage and propagation. Few heterosexual unions remain childless. All same-sex unions are barren. This biological fact of life renders the term “shotgun wedding” meaningless as regards an entire class of persons--individuals who say their marriages are based on the same principles as everyone else. Though hardly a happy image, this coercive practice (based on whatever stigma still attends out-of-wedlock birth) bears further witness, alongside the term “illegitimate,” to the essential link between marriage and children.

Should marriage be forced to accommodate same-sex commitments, it is hard to believe that this revised institution will continue to be viewed as the ideal framework for raising the offspring that same-sex couples cannot, by themselves, produce. Marital unions will likely focus even more exclusively on the feelings that two people have for each other--and even less on the children that one class of married pairs can, and another can’t, produce. This intensified focus on feelings will expedite the delinkage of sex, marriage, and family that began in the 60’s with the era of convenient birth control. Such marriages, lacking the substantive bond between feelings and family, are destined to be as short-lived as nuptials sealed with a vow to be faithful “as long as we both shall love.”(2)

For some time it has been fashionable to disparage couples who look to maternity as a way to save their marriages. The problem with this desperate logic, however, isn’t that it’s totally benighted. Instead, this reasoning puts the child at the wrong end of the marital relationship--as glue to mend what is already broken. Ideally, children are mutually desired centers of affection that serve to strengthen existing bonds. The spilled-milk approach to parenthood recognizes, only belatedly, the ephemeral nature of feelings not tied to something as tangible and enduring as “our baby.”

Marriage and Child-Rearing

It is hard to fathom the intellectual obstinacy needed to deny what seems a prima facie argument on behalf of male-female marriage—namely, that children are best raised within two-parent, male-female homes. Yet individuals frequently cite a handful of limited and ambiguous studies in order to “prove” the opposite of what nature and common sense would suggest.(3)

What is incontrovertible, however, even within the dubious world of social science, is that children raised by two parents (who, as of now, “happen to be” male and female) are more successful on measures of social, emotional, and educational welfare than children lacking one or the other parent due to divorce or abandonment. What I think is equally plain is that a definition of marriage that ignores male-female consummation, and thus the link between marriage and family, will open the door (or rather, the floodgates) to a view of sexual relations that ignores children altogether.

Same-sex unions need not worry about having and educating offspring--a fact that clearly contributes to the short-term character of most homosexual pairings.(4) Until recently opposite sex couples were obliged by society to worry about such matters. Under a regime of same-sex marriage, men and women will doubtless think less about these duties than they do today. After all, so goes the self-interested logic, if “studies prove” that kids are OK with same-sex guardians, why shouldn’t they be OK in less controversial domestic arrangements that also fall short of a presumably-discredited ideal?

Some homosexual advocates agree that, optimally, children should have two, married, male-female parents. They concede that it makes sense to prefer intimate role models of maleness, femaleness, and male-female domestic relations. But they deny that same-sex marriage undermines this ideal. This optimistic assessment seems implausible given the positive public attention already received by gay couples--and even gay singles--who go to great lengths to birth or adopt children. On the contrary, what seems to be emerging is a view of marriage that ignores not only the connection between marriage, procreation, and child-rearing but also the link between male-female parents and domestic training. This is precisely the scenario suggested by relevant statistics following the institution of gay marriage in Scandanavian countries.

In Sweden, where gay unions were made legal in 1994, marriage rates hit an historic low in 1997.(5) Meanwhile, out-of-wedlock births in 2001 rose to a record high of 55%. In Norway, where elites foisted gay marriage upon a reluctant country in 1993, illegitimate births rose from 39% to 50% by the end of the decade. Finally, in Denmark, which provided for gay unions in 1989, the out-of-wedlock birth rate for first-born children has increased to 60%--a figure that indicates a growing wall of separation between marriage and procreation in the minds of young Danes.

These numbers provide convincing evidence that under a regime of same-sex marriage even more children than today will be raised in homes that have no intimate male-female model. We should not pretend, for the sake of tolerance, that such homes are “just as good,” psychologically speaking, as homes where children see mothers and fathers interacting almost every day. Children who grow up in fatherless or motherless homes know that something is missing. If it is missing because of an accident, that’s tragic. If it is missing due to divorce, that’s regrettable. But if it is missing by design, then that situation is a socially sanctioned form of child abuse.

People might argue, based on the preceding observation, that same-sex marriage should be legal just as divorce and single-parenthood are permitted. This comparison is misleading. The latter circumstances are not (at least not yet) viewed as ideals to be celebrated. Instead, they are concessions to weakness and occasions for grief. The same-sex equivalency argument would transform all these domestic arrangements into joyous states mirroring a bride-groom wedding. Only minds untouched by divorce, clouded by the rigors of single parenthood, or blinded by ideology could seriously entertain such an empirically unwarranted equation.

Furthermore, children actually reared within same-sex households are not only deprived of male-female domestic models, they are also deprived of a family within which reproductive desire is channeled into a framework of familial affection. After all, no homosexual union, within or without marriage, has reproductive significance. Consequently, children raised in these environments will almost certainly be less prepared for male-female relationships, less likely to view those relationships in the context of a family, and more likely to indulge the variety of impulses that constitute the erotic profile of most humans.

The Fish or Fowl Myth

Over the last two decades we have been given to understand that each person is “straight” or “gay” in the same way that people are born with blue or brown eyes. Sit-coms (today’s preferred propaganda tool) assert this notion with a repetitive vengeance. Yet no body of evidence comes close to confirming this dogma. Meanwhile evidence for the malleability of sexual expression is right before our eyes--yet ignored in the name of political correctness.

It is now fashionable for Hollywood types (as with Jerry Springer guests) to declare themselves “bisexual”--a term that raises huge problems for devotees of the I’m-just-that-way school of thought. Also increasingly prevalent are stories about “gay” celebrities who later link up with members of the opposite sex. Ellen DeGeneres’ one-time partner, Anne Heche, is a prominent example. Diversity of this stripe leads individuals who embrace the fish or fowl dogma in disconcerting directions.

Is bisexuality genetic? If so, are bisexuals condemned by their chemistry to be promiscuous? Are threesomes and groups the next “progressive” innovations? How does “being who I am, sexually” differ from sheer indulgence of whatever erotic urges happen to emerge from regions just south of the navel? Is self-restraint always verboten--or only sometimes? And how is one to know which impulses are “me” and which are gratuitous?

People more intent on being non-judgmental than on providing guidance for the next generation aren’t inclined to ponder these questions. They would rather blindly embrace what is politically palatable--that children’s sexual habits are inflexibly set--than confront the “lesbian chic” experimentation that now pervades college life. Cognitive dissonance is resolved by denying or ignoring the evidence at hand.

Here’s the bottom line of this train of thought. The popular idea that boys and girls aren’t affected by their sexual environment is clearly a myth. Even a recent study conducted by researchers sympathetic to the gay agenda now says as much. These sociologists admit, gingerly, what was previously denied because most folks would have found the conclusions highly objectionable. Today, however, in a society where “gay marriage” is promoted on a par with “straight marriage,” the aversion to homosexuality has been so minimized that the air-brushed truth can be told. Children raised by homosexual partners “seem to grow up to be more open to homeoerotic relations.”(6)

Sex-Ed and Gay-Marriage

What is true for children raised in same-sex households is true to a lesser extent for all children--boys and girls who may soon be forced by avant garde health teachers to ask themselves at the age of ten just which sex they think about marrying. That’s a perverse load to put on kids who have yet to reach puberty. Only ideological zealots, moral ostriches, and confirmed couch potatoes could possibly think a “freedom” of this sort is anything but an invitation to social chaos.

Progressive views of sex have taken us from an illegitimacy rate of 4% in 1950 to 33% today--and from under 20% to almost 70% among blacks. The idea that legitimizing homosexual marriage will stanch or reverse that trend requires a degree of self-deception that borders on the psychotic. Adolescents invited to explore their sexual identity will not sit quietly in the corner until they choose A or B-- especially not when “bisexual” or “polymorphous” are among the options that a society bereft moral backbone is putting on the table.

At a meeting of very tolerant church folks, I was discussing, as politely as possible, some of the off-putting and dangerous practices that are erotic norms among male homosexuals. [I invite readers to peruse the NARTH website.(7)] The general reaction ranged from denial to disbelief. One commentator went so far as to assert that homosexual sex and gay marriage had nothing to do with each other--an assertion equivalent to denying that consummation is linked to marriage. Most of these people seemed to believe that same-sex intercourse involves no greater medical risks than heterosexual relations and that only a geographical accident caused AIDS to be vastly more prevalent among America’s homosexuals than among heterosexuals.

If putative adults are abysmally ignorant of the nature and medical consequences of male homosexuality, how much more are their media-molded children kept in the dark about the dangers of acts that constitute an open invitation to disease and death. The portraits that children constantly see and hear in the media falsely portray gay sex as a benign variation of heterosexual relations. About nothing are same-sex proponents so deceptive as the normal erotic practices of homosexuals. Any culture that puts a seal of approval on gay marriage is as much as inviting its children to engage in forms of sexual expression that are both sterile and dangerous--practices that have no natural connection to the creation of a family.

Arguing for Armageddon

The philosopher Edmund Burke would sympathize with those who face the task of painting a plausible portrait of a hypothetical future. There are so many subtle interconnections that one can hardly imagine the impact of even minor changes. Despite the assurances of pundits whose views are assiduously attuned to tenor of the Times, a change of the magnitude now contemplated will surely have enormous consequences--consequences that may dwarf even the devastating effects of the sixties sexual revolution.

Bumper-stickers can proclaim the onset of Armageddon, but they cannot make an argument for it. It is incumbent upon defenders of traditional marriage, therefore, to ponder realistically and rationally, the shape of a culture that has rejected one of history’s most fundamental assumptions--an assumption rooted in the reproductive facts of life.

Marriage has been at the heart of our rise from savagery to civilization. I do not think that future generations will bless us for severing its already damaged root--the one linking propagation to commitment.

(1) Mere Christianity, Book III, Ch. 5, “Sexual Morality.”

(2) William Bennett relates the story of a couple who pledged to stay together “as long as we both shall love.” His suggestion for a wedding gift was paper plates.

(3) The tenuous and even contradictory nature of these very limited studies can be seen in Charlotte Patterson’s highly tendentious article summarizing studies prior to 1992, “Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents,” Child Development, V. 63, 1992.

(4) McWhirter and Mattison, The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1984). Gay authors Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen observed, “Alas, it turns out that, on this point, public myth is supported by fact. There is more promiscuity among gays...than among straights.” Even among committed partners, they observe, “the cheating ratio, given enough time, approaches 100%.” Cf. After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90's (Doubleday, 1989).

(5) All Scandanavian figures come from Stanley Kurtz, “Beyond Gay Marriage,” The Weekly Standard, August 4, 2003.

(6) Stacey and Biblarz, American Sociological Review, 2001.

(7) National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, John R. Diggs Jr., “The Health Risks of Gay Sex.” Cf. also R.S. Hogg, et al., International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 26, No. 3, 657-661. “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men.”

MAKING "MEN WITHOUT CHESTS"

“And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” Thus ends America’s Declaration of Independence—a document that cost most of its fifty-six signers dearly in terms of blood and treasure.

Elite opinion today finds such statements of commitment undiplomatic and imprudent—quaint relics from a bygone era when goals other than comfort and self-fulfillment stood at the apex of human aspiration.

In similar fashion contemporary commentators view military service as a barbaric enterprise pursued by individuals with few employment options and limited intellectual firepower. What does it profit someone, they reason, to risk life and limb for the sake of ideals that are subject to deconstruction and ridicule by the likes of themselves? Instead of throwing it all away, these dupes could have pursued a Lexus-load of pleasurable alternatives.

Put succinctly, among the secular literati courage is a virtue that has fallen out of fashion. In its place stand avant-garde cynicism, rhetorical cleverness, and a passion for artistic refinement. Maureen Dowd is their cup of tea, not General Patton.

This shift is understandable. After all, if life has no higher purpose, if ideals are only tarted up neuroses, if patriotism is a mendacious veil for narrow economic interests —then no reasonable person would give up a chance for happiness, short as it may be, for a vocation whose risks are great and whose rewards are largely intangible.

Moreover, most men and women aren’t going to forfeit their lives for the sake of a society that fervently proclaims the necessity of doing your own thing. Nor will they practice self-denial within a culture whose primary philosophical images are those of randomness, materialism, and ultimate extinction.

Over half a century ago C. S. Lewis criticized academics whose disdain for martial endeavors resulted in curricula designed to produce “men without chests” —i.e. persons lacking those noble sentiments associated with, among other traits, bravery and self-sacrifice. Since that time the intellectual landscape has shifted more dramatically in favor of those who “laugh at virtue” and mock patriotism.

When I look at the clash of civilizations that is taking place today, I wonder how long the West can continue to draw on accounts that, in intellectual circles, have long been closed. The phrase “sacred honor” is more likely to produce a guffaw among the pen-wielding set than to promote a series of sacrificial acts. As for “Divine Providence,” this idea has been dismissed by smarter-than-thous—for the sake of human autonomy.

Unfortunately, freedom without a moral context amounts to little more than self-indulgence. And self-indulgence isn’t a medium within which courage thrives.
A decadent culture, it appears, sows the seeds of its own destruction.

A LEFTIST GEOGRAPHY SERMON

Anyone who hasn’t heard the screed that a tenth-grade geography teacher in Aurora, Colorado, recently inflicted on his students ought to visit a website (like Michelle Malkin’s) and take a listen.

The “lesson” becomes a tirade—or more aptly, a jeremiad. Capitalism is transformed into an institutional Satan, Hitlerian traits are ascribed to George W. Bush, and America becomes the focus of evil in the modern world. Apocalyptic certitude permeates this rant presumably designed to get students to think critically about the nation’s foreign policy.

As a two-decade veteran of secondary education, I can assure readers that Mr. Jay Bennish isn’t alone. The only question is how many high school teachers go as far as he does when it comes to indoctrination. What is beyond reasonable dispute is that a very large number of individuals who graduate from schools of education share Bennish’s cookie-cutter political faith and regularly regurgitate that dogma to their captive audiences.

What Bennish’s sermon makes perfectly clear is the extent to which ideology, emotion, faith, and fundamental notions of good and evil permeate political thought. Moreover, the missionary enterprises of left-wing ideologues like Bennish are almost always more extensive, divisive, and offensive than any speech that the Supremes ever deemed an unconstitutional entanglement of the state in matters religious.

As numerous metaphors in the prior paragraphs suggest, no clear line of demarcation separates political conviction and religious faith. And if that is true, then a whole series of decisions that have come down from the Court in the last four decades are based on an untenable premise. That premise places religious speech in a completely different category from political speech and demands that the former be minimized or eliminated from public institutions.

Anyone who has pondered a Soviet May-Day parade, replete with iconic representations of the communist Trinity (Marx, Lenin, and, prior to his excommunication, Stalin) knows that true believers marched under the red flag with the same all-encompassing devotion that characterizes the most committed Christians, Jews, or Muslims. A similar spirit is observable at political meetings on college campuses.

The bottom line of this train of thought isn’t that religious rants should be permitted in public schools alongside political harangues. Instead, because political and religious discourse share fundamental characteristics, the same rules should govern both types of speech. Neither religious nor political discourse should be one-sided and arrogantly disrespectful of dissenting perspectives. Nor should a public school teacher ever take advantage of his or her position to cram a belief system down the throats of students.

As things stand now, however, the Court pretends that political philosophy is somehow less divisive, more rational, and less constitutionally restricted than statements that are traditionally connected to a religious tradition. In this way it leaves open the legal door to geography courses that are more dogmatic than a catechism class.

ON HOMOSEXUALITY, MARRIAGE, AND JUDGMENT

(The following is a slightly edited response to a question about homosexuality, same-sex marriage, sin, and the afterlife. I republish it here because I think the ideas are important and because I doubt that many folks peruse the "comments" section--where the original response is located.)

First of all I think it is important to say, as C. S. Lewis did in his popular book, Mere Christianity, that religious folks tend to focus inordinate attention on sexual flaws or faults but that their scriptures emphasize spiritual shortcomings—pride, selfishness, lust for power, heartlessness, etc. That comment is appropriately followed by the confession that immorality of this, and of the sexual variety, permeates all lives—including my own. We are all, to varying degrees, enmeshed in immorality.

Secondly, I think of most actions as being on a continuum or scale that terminates, at its apex, in an ideal. Nobody achieves the ideal, but it exists as the goal toward which individuals and societies strive and by which they judge their own moral circumstances. In my estimation (a view endorsed by the Judeo-Christian historical tradition) the “ideal” domestic relationship is a male-female marriage. And marriage, in my view, is an institution whose primary function is the creation of a loving, stable union of husband and wife within which children are raised.

Over the last half-century, however, marriage has been progressively redefined by feelings of affection. The inevitable consequence of that redefinition has been to undermine the child-rearing aspect of marriage. When heterosexual marriage is defined in this manner, there appears to be little to distinguish it from same-sex unions. But when one focuses on sexual fidelity for the sake of a family, it becomes clear that what applies to almost all heterosexual unions does not apply at all (biologically) when it comes to same-sex unions.

In concrete terms, however, not everyone is so constituted (or emotionally arranged as a result of social interaction) as to realize the ideal of marriage. In addition, some persons may be able to achieve non-marital ideals by virtue of the “gift of celibacy.” What I find positively destructive, however, is the insistence on making feelings of affection the basis for understanding marriage—and thus relegating sexual activity and reproduction to activities that, outside of marriage, are still ok. I think it is inevitable that the institutionalization of same-sex marriage will further lessen this vital linkage (since reproduction, by definition, is not part of same-sex intercourse).

On a more individual note, a rather unbiased study, done at a Vancouver hospital and published in 1997 in the Oxford University International Journal of Epidemiology, came up with these conclusions: “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871.”

This conclusion coincides with others that are available to persons who want to discuss, honestly, the health impact of same-sex intercourse. Unfortunately, our society isn’t interested (in this and numerous other subjects) in having an honest discussion. Instead, vilification of individuals who don’t toe the line that social elites favor is the order of the day.

Do my observations and this medical data mean that same-sex intercourse is “immoral”? I think it indicates that it, like sex outside of marriage, doesn’t live up to the “ideal.” The same is true, I would assert, of my divorced state of affairs. Yet I don't justify myself by saying (as intellectuals like Constance Ahrons do) that “good divorces” are plentiful and that children aren’t regularly damaged by marital breakups. I don’t exhibit the ideal, but I try to do the best that I can under the circumstances. And, I continue to honor, rather than undermine, the ideal.

What I find most depressing is the tendency that all of us have to disparage ideals for the sake of justifying our own actions. When divorce began to be popular, intellectuals quickly began to declare that single parents could raise children just as well as a married couple and that “quality time” was all that mattered. People yearning to justify themselves ate it up. But it wasn’t true. (Patrick Moynihan discussed this topic a bit in his well-known essay, “Defining Deviancy Down.”) I think the same things are being said now about raising children in two-adult homes where the sex of the adults is inconsequential.

As to your question about the afterlife, I have only the inclination to believe that, if there is something like rewards and punishments, we will be judged by one who will be more merciful and understanding than myself. (And I say this with the thought that I myself am inclined to be understanding, seeing as I am acutely aware of my own faults.) In short, doing pretty well, given one’s circumstances, is what I tend to expect of folks—not perfection. I can’t see how a perfect judge would be less understanding.

DECODING THE "CYCLE OF VIOLENCE"

In recent decades the phrase “cycle of violence” has become popular among academics and politically active celebrities. These words are typically employed when speaking about groups that blow up wedding parties and behead civilian hostages. By contrast, in these same intellectual circles the term “evil” is reserved for corporate executives and Presidents of the wrong political party—that is, for verbal targets who don’t fire back with live ammunition.

The phrase “cycle of violence” has several advantages. First, it transforms discrete acts of murder, retribution, or self-defense into an impersonal pattern. Rather than talking about particular persons who are guilty of specific crimes, this popular phrase encourages us to focus on a revolving door of mayhem in which hapless victims have been “caught up.”

(In similar fashion, individuals who promote cultural depravity are hidden behind “pendulum swings” that invisibly move public taste from the pole labeled Bing Crosby and “Leave It To Beaver” to one named “Two and a Half Men” and Eminem.)

The phrase “cycle of violence” thus excludes from one’s imagination the idea that certain groups and individuals might have greater responsibility than others for initiating or exacerbating hostilities. Messy details about what groups believe and how they talk about their opponents are shunted to the side.

Moreover, the proper solution to a “cycle of violence” is simple. Just intervene at any point in the flow of events to break the historical momentum. According to this paradigm, a tranquil equilibrium will automatically emerge once “the cycle” has been stopped. By picturing circumstances in this way one achieves a certain moral equivalence. Names disappear as attention is focused on a malevolent maelstrom that transcends human responsibility.

Several years ago a similar point of view was employed (in similar circles) when the arms race between America and the Soviet Union was discussed. If the U.S. unilaterally froze its weapon production, then the “cycle” would be broken and harmony would emerge. A more infantile version of this idea was promoted under the Sleep-In for Peace label.

In short, “cycle of violence” language excuses us from the task of distinguishing between force used to counter evil and violence employed to propagate evil. Indeed, it mindlessly places the actions of law enforcement officers and gang members in the same category. Most of all, this phrase makes it unnecessary to resist evil or even to take it seriously.

Almost half a century ago Hannah Arendt, speaking of the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, observed that sophisticated opinion wished only to condemn trends “so general that distinctions [could] no longer be made.” I imagine that she would find today’s “cycle of violence” crowd (a group that includes “Munich” producer Steven Spielberg) as morally confused as the intellectuals she took to task.

EUROPE'S RIGHT TO BLASPHEME

Is free speech the principle that divides courageous Europeans from Muslim protestors who have torched buildings in Damascus and Beirut because of a handful of cartoonish depictions of the prophet Muhammad? Is Europe the continent where freedom to speak one’s mind reigns supreme while Arab nations exhibit rabid intolerance for opinions that don’t conform to their cultural status quo? Well, not entirely.

According to European newspapers, freedom of the press was the sole issue that motivated their reprinting the (relatively mild) caricatures of Muhammad that were published last fall in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten. It appears, however, that Europe’s devotion to free speech only applies to persons who embrace the deeply-held cultural convictions of post-modern Europe.

This conclusion is borne out by the verdict recently handed down by a French court against Christian Vanneste, a member of France’s parliament who dared to declare that “heterosexuality is morally superior to homosexuality.” For this breach of secular dogma Vanneste was fined 3,000 euro and ordered to pay the same amount in damages to the three gay organizations that took him to court. In addition, Vanneste had to pay for the verdict’s publication in Le Monde and two other French publications.

This judgment, designed to squelch debate about a critical moral issue, mirrors a case in Sweden where a Pentecostal minister was found guilty of making critical remarks about same-sex intercourse—a conviction that was subsequently overturned.

It is hard to think of Europe as a bastion of free speech when the mere expression of ideas that contradict elite opinion is subject to legal sanction. The real difference, it seems, between European sophisticates and Muslim protesters is that they have different beliefs about what one can and cannot say—and different ways of enforcing their respective creeds.

The German newspaper Die Welt argued in an editorial that a “right to blaspheme” exists in the West—a declaration about as impressive, given the state of European religiosity, as a Saudi journalist touting the “right” to venerate Muhammad in the desert kingdom.

More to the point, I think, is the comment in France Soir that the offending cartoons were published to show that “religious dogma” has no place in a secular society. This unguarded comment coincides with a statement issued by a Muslim official in Germany: “It was done not to defend freedom of the press but to spite the Muslims.”

What secular Europe is really grappling with isn’t how far freedom of the press extends. The same editors who are agonizing over the publication of these cartoons wouldn’t give a second thought about printing offensive parodies of Christian themes. Their real problem is how to deal with a group that doesn’t take blasphemy lightly—with believers who are eager to fight back with bombs and swords.

The Danish paper that initially published the “blasphemous” cartoons has already apologized for giving offense to Muslims—though they apologized while asserting their right to act as they did. A contrition-sated defense of press freedom was also proffered by the Prime Minister of Denmark.

More dramatic backpedaling took place at France Soir, where the paper’s owner fired his managing editor “as a powerful sign of respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual.” In the middle of this sensitivity orgy Bill Clinton was moved to throw in his two cents worth by labeling as “appalling…these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam.”

It’s pretty clear that European secularists (like their soulmate, the ex-President) aren’t prepared to risk death for the sacred “right to blaspheme.” When it comes to facing real danger, cowardly decadence is their cup of tea—and freedom of speech an expediency to be invoked when skewering opponents who don’t pose a clear and present danger.

America’s Declaration of Independence concludes with these words: “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

To the 56 patriots who signed this document, faith in a greater power buttressed their courage and shaped their understanding of honor. To individuals for whom the word “Providence” is a risible delusion, sacrificing everything for the “right to blaspheme” must seem like an act of stupidity.

In this judgment they are certainly correct.

HOWARD STERN AND THE WAR ON CIVILITY

“We played dildo golf. We played wheel of sex. We are the last of a dying breed. This is a big moment. We broke every rule known to radio and mankind. The government says, ‘Clean up your act.’ We say, ‘Never.’”

These were Howard Stern’s words as he said goodbye to the public airwaves and hello to the broadcasting possibilities of satellite communication. No longer bound by FCC rules about decency and the public interest, Stern is now free to plumb new depths of depravity for his fans—moving from flatulence, nudity, and pubescent discourse on mammalian emissions to really hardcore stuff—perhaps advanced bestiality and snuff sex.

To hear Stern denounce the regulatory restrictions under which he labored, one would think that former FCC Chairman Michael Powell was a reincarnation of Cotton Mather—if not Torquemada. In actual fact, the number of official no-nos are so few and so threadbare that a large part of the shock jock’s cachet arose from his ability to expose the absurdity of remaining rules. After all, why should one stop at seven unspeakable words when the principle of temperance in public discourse is mocked with every utterance that escapes Stern’s mouth—statements broadcast to millions of Americans whose moral imaginations have been shaped by the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, and Roman Polanski.

Indeed, Stern’s only Mephistophelean virtue is that he illustrates, time and again, that our society isn’t really serious about the limits it sets on public communications. The pitiful restrictions we retain only foster the illusion that the pit of depravity into which we have leapt comes equipped with a plain of reasonable decadence that will, eventually, halt our decent into the abyss. Quite unintentionally, Stern has shown that broadcast prohibitions are window dressing. He has broken them all—proudly and profitably.

Now Stern must search for new taboos to violate in order to perpetuate the popular myth that there is something praiseworthy about someone who will say anything and do anything that doesn’t land him in prison, in the hospital, in the morgue, or—and this last point stands above the rest—in a cheap apartment without an audience. Since Stern doesn’t have Powell to kick around anymore, he must violate broader cultural norms in order to demonstrate for the paying public his disdain for civilized boundaries. Cannibalism and incest are topics that may be ripe for exploitation by the “King of all Media.” It should be worth noting whether Stern’s fans will balk at such “courageous” iconoclasm.

Aficionados of urbane decadence have long spoken about the process whereby counter-cultural activities become mainstream. They note that it took a while before an un-hip society finally accepted Elvis’ twisting hips, just as it took a few decades before Hugh Hefner could plausibly present himself (on Larry King) as an enlightened reformer of “sexual-social mores.” The unspoken premise behind all these observations has been that mainstream behavior is morally inconsequential.

Now Stern is receiving the same treatment. Recently, a TV ad began airing in which a husband fawns over his wife’s telecommunication gift to him—a device that provides access to Stern’s satellite feed. Add to this commercial the amount of smiley-face news coverage that was given to Stern’s career move, and the conclusion is unavoidable: Howard is mainstream--no big deal.

On the other hand, it should be obvious to any thoughtful person that mainstream behavior isn’t always innocuous. Slavery is a clear case in point. It is also obvious to all but a few bi-coastal celebrities that a society devoid of rules is a world where life, in Thomas Hobbes’ famous words, becomes “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

The naïve faith exhibited by Stern’s fans, who equate fraternity pranks with the obliteration of civilized boundaries, will be severely tested when their boy has to market delinquency without the aid of an official fall guy. Envelope-pushing won’t seem so jolly if listeners begin to sense that their imagined safety net is incompatible with Stern’s universal moral solvent. The “war of all against all” isn’t an entertaining prospect—not even for the severely depraved.

One can hope that Stern is the last of a dying breed. As things stand now, however, he is only the most conspicuous representative of a culture on the precipice of self-destruction.