Ah sweet consistency! Dave Miller searches for it, the soapster is probably more consistent than most, most hold it up as a virtue but there's just a little something I've discovered quite on my own. In fact it's rather disturbing, unsettling even and it's something we'd rather not face. It's
the Quirk,
oooooohhhhhh!!!!!! and many times it leads to Icky Things. Basically I've come to the realization over time that quite a few of our positions if logically applied to their stretching points have quirks, in fact they're built-in and it doesn't really matter where these positions fall on the political spectrum. If you're a bona-fide libertarian then you readily accept the premise that there's something wrong with our civil rights laws at least the parts that forbid private companies from discriminating against African-Americans (Rand Paul kind of acknowledged the quirk and then ran away from it). If you're a federalist then you have to accept miscegenation laws should they unhappily make a return. If you're for the gay marriage then you have to welcome the brother and sister team, even polygamy. While we're on the subject of Sex if you're a Catholic and don't accept artificial birth control as morally licit then you have to accept the notion that you should only have sex when you want a kid. Natural Family Planning (NFP) is a loophole and I once received a newsletter in the mail from some ultra-traditionalist Catholic sect that had a problem with even Pope John Paul 2 pushing NFP as basically it's just what I said: you should only have sex when you want a kid which is not the Z-man position of course but we are discussing quirks here. Terri Schiavo was a vegetable and not even human, a common enough position at the time except that you'd also have to accept the scenario then of somebody walking into her hospice room and then stabbing her to death and not having to face prosecution. Chris Rock talks about niggers, I should be able to as well. Now it's not the Z-man position that Chris Rock should talk about niggers but once you accept the Premise......I could go on. Pro-choice would mean you'd have to accept a world without abortion if let's say pro-lifers won in the marketplace of ideas and then every doctor on the planet for reasons of conscience refused to perform the procedure. I left Pro-life out you say? I leave that to Miss Saty. Quirks are political particles shooting around the political universe but we refuse to even acknowledge their existence and people (like me) who bring them up are accused of slippery-sloping. It's why a Protestant minister I once worked with said to me he doesn't believe in logic, he seemed to know. This list is very incomplete, quirks are EVERYWHERE but just to get things started let's go with gay marriage and a brother and sister wanting to marry each other, hell let's throw in some happy polygamists too for good measure. What some people call slippery-sloping is simply the acknowledgement that quirks exist and we'd better start addressing them. The slippery slope, you're skiiing towards the Quirk anyway. Doesn't matter either if the theoretical scenario under discussion is absurd (for the time being) or otherwise not realistic, quirks exist at the very end of many positions on the political spectrum these days. It truly is a funkadelic world.
What of sibling marriage? If the two of them are adults and both consent, as disgusting as it is, have at it. Liberty means having the individual freedom to do things that, provided they do not infringe upon the rights of another, some might morally object to. Same goes for polygamy. Everyone's adults, everyone is of sound mind (arguable I know given the instance...).
ReplyDelete"In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins."
SCORE!
But how many proponents of gay marriage (Shaw, Saty et al) would even hold this? It's much better to limit the debate to marriage between gays this way right-wingers appear illogical not to mention lacking in compassion. To employ the slippery-slope, something that I get accused of from time to time, is perfectly valid in my opinion. HOW do we define Logic? Is it often overrated and can it get us in trouble?
ReplyDelete"How do we define logic?"
ReplyDeleteCan't speak for everyone but this cuts it for me:
"Logic is man’s method of reaching conclusions objectively by deriving them without contradiction from the facts of reality—ultimately, from the evidence provided by man’s senses."
Further...
"All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms. All through this process, the work of his mind consists of answers to a single question: What is it? His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic, and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists (A is A). Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality."
Overrated? Yeah for some it apparently is and failure to employ it is met with deletarious consequences. As for getting you into trouble.
Michael Kinsley has posed the question maybe the government shouldn't get involved in the marriage business at all but the reason why I bring up Logic here is many people like to say we're inconsistent on the issues. Logic would seem to me to be a type of Math and is there only one system of logic? Every issue is different, some are more complex than others and so I see it as no contradiction that a conservative can be against abortion yet oppose the welfare state. Pro-life and the death penalty, there is some inconsistency here and yet there are marked differences between the two issues. What I'm trying to tell people, Shaw, Saty, everybody actually is our positions have logical consequences, think about it.
ReplyDeleteMy problem with the gay marriage --
ReplyDeleteIt's redefining marriage. That is the real issue not gays per se. Once you redefine marriage in some way you then open it up to other connfigurations as well. The Michael Kinsley proposal would solve this problem but would upset alot of heteros. Since government has the right to set the terms of any contract why would refusing to marry two siblings be an injustice that cries out to heaven? You say soapie that government holds a monopoly on certain services marriage being one of them and so maybe we just have to live with this and move on.
"It's redefining marriage."
ReplyDeleteNo it really isn't. Ever been in the kitchen and someone says they're going to "marry" two ingredients together?
Marriage is the process of binding, bringing together, union, etc.
Hobgoblins you say? Funny I hadn't heard that for ions and here I've read it twice this week. Here's the other:
ReplyDelete"Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary." - H.L. Mencken
including the icky ingredients soapie?
ReplyDeleteyep even the icky ones.
ReplyDeleteIt's an experiment ya know. I once married eggs and crab meat. Too much of a good thing really and it made me ill to my stomach (not puking ill but the crab meat was just so rich it was like a 10 pound rock just sitting there). It was a Saturday or Sunday morning and we later went and ran some errands. I had to sit in the car at Walmart my stomach was so wrecked.