just like in 1984 and Brave New World
The past was about real romance, not match.com. The past had a breadth and depth to it that the modernists don't know they're doing away with. The past climate that is said to have produced an Imus is said to be bad and the past, pre-Clarence Thomas, that encouraged men to ask the same woman out more than once was bad too. Conservatives are about preserving the past and liberals want to change it. Why is the past bad?
From the New York Times for April the 14th, "Shock Talk Without Apologies", by Robert Wright. He's all for political correctness and feels Ann Coulter should be held to the same standard as Don Imus but the liberals of a bygone era said free speech means nothing if it doesn't protect the ugly and offensive. If people like Mr. Wright had their way things would be, well, perfectly boring. Anyway he makes this rather common but flawed point when he says:
"If social harmony is the goal sanctions should be focused along the ethnic fault lines that are most precarious. The black-white boundary is such a line given both the history of oppression and ongoing economic disparities between blacks and whites" (emphasis z's). I've lived close to a public housing project for much of my life and have noticed just as many poor whites living there as blacks. I myself, white as snow, have never lived high on the hog, most of the time I struggle like the rest of us. I wish I had a little more economic disparity to boast about, I would't have had to sell my used fishing boat a few years back because it was like having two cars.
Abandoning the past is not progress.
They say ignorance of the law is no defense but that was said when we had far less laws than we do today. Who knew in some towns you can't feed the birds or if you drive over somebody's cat accidentally you have to track the owners down to report this. As my favorite conservative Joe Sobran is fond of saying "make enough laws and everybody becomes a criminal." I say in a country undergoing a constant legislative orgy ignorance IS a defense, we should be receiving little cultural bulletins in the mail every week informing us of the latest rules of conduct and speech. I mean who can keep up?
ReplyDeleteTaking away a person's edge is bad news. If Imus were serious all the time nobody would listen to him and if z himself didn't push the feminist envelope from time to time and push their buttons this blog would be as dull as a graham cracker.
Conservatives, not too long ago, were big-time critics of our victim climate but you don't hear a peep about this now vis a vis the Imus affair, it's like they've given up their principles to try to win over the black vote which they're never going to get anyway Sean (yes you). Once those Rutgers gals went on O their official victim status was secure.
This blog is definitely NOT dull.
ReplyDeleteHow about the Duke players accuser?
ReplyDeleteMaybe she just got confused. Maybe it wasn't the Duke lacrosse team at all, but the notoriously badly-behaved Duke choir?
For liberals the past is always bad, you have to keep moving forward, for the liberal the past is a hobgloblin, run a little faster it's right behind you. The conservative wants to build on the wisdom of the past, we can add little corrections if you want but let's not just chuck the whole thing.
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