The more I think about it

the more Michael Kinsley's proposal makes sense. In order to "resolve" the gay marriage debate he has said why not have the government get out of the marriage business as in completely? no hetero or homo kind of deals. Now the conservative argument has always been government needs to recognize and foster the institution of marriage in order to promote positive social goods like social stability and procreation (the National Review argument) but while I'm not against the government officially recognizing this in some way is there really THAT compelling a reason for government to get involved at all? Full Disclosure - At work today I was minding my own business when a co-worker while working alongside the older lady manager (a curious sort) said "we're waiting for your wedding day" and a couple of other pertinent questions. However this would involve a whole sideblog about the DGTZ (or Don't Go There Zone) and the ever curious mofos daily buzzing around its perimeter, social conformist cops, folks who procreate somehow feeling more important than people like you, the desire to work in Peace, are they really talking behind your back when they should be working? & a Host of Other Related Issues. Suffice to say gays would make a far stronger case if they simply adopted the Kinsley Proposal. If the government should get out of My Sex Life then by the same token why should they officially sanction my arrangements? You could still get "married" if you wish but that'd be your business......social gnats......and divorce would cease to exist because its predeccesor, marriage, would cease to exist. You'd think conservatives would be making these arguments. With our track record of hetero marriage it's like gays serving in the military, WHY?

Stranded

Political correctness

Political correctness means

you have a bad attitude.

Take the title of Mal's latest blog - What the Hell Is a Black Caucus and Why Are They Allowed to Exist? - there's a bad 'tude going on there. It's like with the opponents of the GZ Mosque, pc is not interested in arguing the merits of the case, it's YOU have a bad attitude. No other possibility exists. IT permeates politics, the workplace, Life in general. IF you rebel against it you're a dark force. Stop hating. If you work with a dickhead or a getover smile and love your brother. PC means we won't hire you to slice bologna if you smoke a doobie in your downtime. It means if you ask a woman out more than once you're a stalker. It means you can't even say the word nigger even if you're only reporting that Chris Rock likes to say the word nigger but somehow he can joke about when he goes to the ATM he looks over his shoulder for niggers but you can't. Don't hate, participate. PC means love your chemo even if you look like an Auschwitz survivor afterwords. PC means The Customer Is Always Right, it means if you're a Muslim then we'll overlook your hatred of gays but not if you're an evangelical Christian. I saw a bumper sticker the other day - WW2 Vet, I Served My Country, Did You? WTF is that???

lose the 'tude!

Is the right to abortion self-evident?

I would submit that nothing is self-evident right off the bat. I'm assuming that all our respective political philosophies required a great deal of thought in shaping what they are today, the Final Version but I do get the sense liberals these days have it all figured out. Here's a kind of philosophical question: despite the millions of abortions in this country and the millions across the globe what if the right to abortion doesn't even exist? that all this time we were practicing a nonright? that this right never even existed in the first place? What are the consequences of this? Have to say this, millions and millions of people doing the same thing does not mean they have the right to do this or that the more common something becomes the more moral it becomes. Back-alley abortions, this may sound harsh but I really don't talk about it because I really don't care. If a pregnant woman wants to throw herself down the stairs just don't hit the cat at the bottom. It's not in my equation because the simple Nub of the Matter is is it right or wrong? do you have a right to do it and is it the taking of a human life? Is SEX necessary? I don't mean it feels good and all that, we all know the otherworldy pleasures involved and I'm not anti-sex by any stretch, quite the contrary but is it necessary? ties in with soapie's proposal of Sex as a Contract, you know what it is and you accept the risks going in. I would submit this: if you do not in some sense oppose the practice then you are not really a conservative. A libertarian maybe but not a true con and I'll give my reasons. I just wanted to let the Liberal on the Bike continue on his merry way lecturing the kids not wearing their helmuts and move This here. Before long The Impasse will have been reached and maybe by then I'll just be moderating. Should be fun:)

Is it more important to win the debate or have a discussion?

Unless you're an amoeba most folks have what's known as a political philosophy but sometimes our so-called inconsistencies are simply the recognition that our philosophy may have a logical absurdity or two if stretched, the Quirk (e.g. brother and sister should not get married). One can be strongly libertarian in spirit but hate abortion and Saty and soap bring up the usual tried-and-true pro-choice angles, really the skip in the record as if we've never heard them before. If we don't agree with Shaw for instance she tends to think we haven't considered her points. Oh no darling we hear you loud and clear we just disagree with you. That's possible ain't it? There's no need to pulverize your opponent, this scorched earth policy (S-Block). I like to think of this place as a coffee klatch, a passionate but friendly cafe. There's no need to break the saucer or piss in the sink.

Debated with Saty at her blog a few months back and for me Michael Schiavo at best was and is a questionable character so we got into a whole medical discussion and before long you reach The Impasse, a ravine or chasm with a shaky footbridge. For me I've reached the end of my walk, may as well turn around and head back to the car. IMO nobody won that one and I'm philosophical about it. It makes for a good Google search and I'm glad I did it. Not her but if people want to hold his water for him I got no problem so long as you don't begrudge me my take. You can even bring your 9/11 Truther movement over here and I won't get personal which reminds me I have to check out Alex Jones' views on the Mosque.

There develops over time if you're a true conservative a certain what I call Conservative Convergence. By this I mean it's ok to question aspects of your own movement from time to time, I've done it many times myself but after awhile you find yourself agreeing more and more with your fellow conservatives and kind of put the old feuds in a shoebox. It's better for society to be pro-life, the GZ mosque, unions are bad, traditional mores should be defended etc. etc. My own definition of being a true conservative is this: libertarianism or maximum liberty but with respect for social mores which many times we get the first part but not that leavening factor. You can be for maximum liberty and still see the wisdom in that it's better off for society to be pro-life for instance and I'm not even talking about the finer points of that debate which have been hammered home time and again (Soapie's Foundry) but the general principle. There's no need for a porn shop to be located within close proximity to a church and angel dust needs to stay banned for reasons of public safety. Many times marijuana is mixed with phencyclidine unbeknownst to the pothead and if you think your local drug dealer has a moral code you're an idiot.

How would you like your coffee?

The near universal consensus in favor of Christ

Now before this blog gets quickly misinterpreted, mentally Sherroded I'll try to frame this in as objective a way as I can. You're a space visitor, you've been around for a few weeks now and you notice that if someone is writing out a check today they'll put the date at Sept. 14, 2010. Now you do a little research into their calendar system (yes Saty I know all about the Chinese calendar so before you get started) and it seems to be almost universally agreed upon, in fact it's not even controversial that on a worldwide basis today is Tuesday, Sept. the 14th, 2010. So there was BC/AD, Before Christ and Anno Domini or "The Year of Our Lord.". Raquel Welch was 1,000,000 years BC with her perfect cave hairstyle and shaved legs but you notice that this Christman, nobody else even comes close to his historical importance. I mean to rejigger the entire calendar system of the World, dividing all of Time and History into before his birth and after his birth, well we don't do that with Buddha or anybody else (BB- Before Buddha, AC - After Confucius) which is not to put the Buddha down but as a space visitor you come to the conclusion that this historical event of Christ's birth, life and death was so important, so pivotal to civilization that there must be some kind of worldwide consensus that still exists to this day in favor of that one man over All The Others. Do you personally know anybody who when writing out a check says "I ain't writing that" when jotting down today's date? In fact this is inarguable, has nothing to do with my personal views as a Christian but is simply the way we do things, an objective fact and I don't even hear atheists or nontheists protest the point.

OK, now attack!!! I've only two responses you are going to hear: What day is today? and Y2K.

A liberal on a bike

Went on my almost daily now long hardcore walk on the beautiful and rustic bike path here that stretches on for miles and the usual crowd: rollerbladers, joggers, old couples walking, fat folks doing the slow shuffle, hounds taking dumps and your ever present bicyclists. It is the law in NYS now that bicyclists have to wear a helmut (that's another issue for another day) so anyways these two young black fellas are peaceably riding along on their two bikes without helmuts of any kind, more like baseball caps and this yuppie on a bike coming the other way, you know the superfit kind without an ounce of lard with the silver designer helmut passes them and right before passing them goes "your heads!! Guys where are your helmuts?!?" and he then proceeds on his way shaking his head, the roving lecturer. Now a libertarian would never do this, I can't imagine soapie in a million years doing this and I could care less. "Where's the condoms guys?" Busybodies, nanny-staters, buttinskies, benevolent stalkers, overall Pains-In-The-Asses.

Listening to Hannity years ago and they were talking about the fat of the land so the caller goes when he walks into a restaurant and sees a Mom giving her fat daughter an ice cream sundae he wants to go up to them and say "what are you doing?" and Hannity apparently agreed. Why do they care so much? I have as my new thesis that Sarcasm is the Defense of Right Order and the two black bicyclists could have said "fuck off hedge fund manager" but didn't but they would have been well within their rights. Libertarianism is looking better to me day after day and would have absolutely nothing to say to that Mom and her porker in Friendly's.

On my leisurely walks among the babbling streams and the forested trees with the goldfinches darting about and the turtles basking on their logs I'm generally mulling over problems, Life's overall suckiness condition. Folks not wearing their helmuts or husketeers sucking down a banana split at Carvel doesn't enter the whole existential picture here. I'll bet most folks are like this, it's my ex just made my life hell and Why the Hell Am I Here not that guy just took a piss in the woods. There was a guy at Barnes & Noble once sitting in one of those big soft comfy chairs reading a mag. He had shorts on and his sack was hanging out. I didn't even say anything.

Get involved.

Specifically why is the Tea Party a bad thing?

Addressed mainly to Shaw and Saty and other like-minded folk. A few weeks back my conservative friend (see even he is confused) asked me what the Tea Party is and I gave him a kind of general answer but I was somewhat at a loss too. All I know is that it's supposed to be

a Bad Thing

and it reminds me of the whole deal with salt. By now it's a universally recognized truth that salt is bad for you but nobody explains why so we go into the store looking for low-salt items, low-sodium cold cuts but nobody really knows why. All I know is that the Tea Party has largely avoided the social issues, seems to have moved beyond the whole pro-life/pro-choice matrix whereas I think and I've always felt that conservatism without pro-life is an empty victory. So for me without this foundation the Tea Party leaves me more than a little spiritually unfulfilled. I'm not a tea partier myself but I don't have the same hostility to the movement the msm has and most liberals. It's definitely a counter-Obama movement but it really started before Obama, with those bank bailouts and folks being asked to mail in a tea bag to their representative's office. I'm also hearing about race alot but this is like an old TV Guide still hanging around the house, why not just chuck it? or maybe it's kept around for nostalgic purposes. This whole teabagging thing, that might have been mildly funny when it first came out but I was a little surprised liberals would make a popular gay sexual practice into a pejorative.

I don't want mental, emotional diarrhetic dribblings here. I want DETAILS.