[Today’s run: 3.25 miles]
I’ve been a subscriber to the Substack hosted newsletter Common Sense, edit by Bari Weiss. This morning I saw an interview of her with Peter Robinson on Youtube, one of his Uncommon Knowledge series. It was interesting.
I like the Common Sense stuff. It is a good variety of information, and very sensible.
I’m not so thrilled with Ms Weiss herself. She is impressive and educated and well spoken. But I see her in about the same light as Andrew Sullivan. Both, having enjoyed personal benefits of the chaos of our time, are now attempting to get the train to stop rolling.
I’m talking about same sex marriage. Sullivan in particular pushed that one hard. And now that he’s had his bit he seems surprised that there were other people lined up behind him to also take their bite and now the remains of the cake are looking a little tattered.
Youtube also has been recently pitching me various versions of “can you define what the word woman means?” which started with Senator Blackburn of Tennessee. Most recently it was some Australian Senator asking and an Australian bureaucrat doing the mumbling.
Definitions are the means to tell one thing apart from other things. The problem is, when one person gets to grab a good word and mangle its meaning, the mangling may appear to open new doors but really they are just holes in the fence. Marriage doesn’t mean a man and woman. Woman doesn’t even mean woman. Things slowly fade away like the Cheshire Cat.
People seem to think, Ok, we had our revolution and I got mine so let’s stop here. But it doesn’t work that way.
One reply on “The mockery of self definition”
I do not know the people mentioned so do not have an informed view on that.
Marriage not so long ago meant man and woman of same race. Who decided that? And who decided that would change?
And in the OT Bible – where a lot of “laws” are found – there are famous folk who (apparently) were godly and who had many wives. Also daughters who couldn’t find a husband after leaving a town that was destroyed owing to being so evil – so they got dad drunk a couple times to help move things along. Marriage bypassed. One naturally wonders if they truly got dad drunk – or if dad did something and he put the blame on the daughters when the story was passed down. These are the people who weren’t evil enough to be killed (along with their children and unborn babies).
We had a president not long ago who has 3 baby mommas (that we know of). He was bragging about wanting to have a married woman so much that he took her furniture shopping. (Not married to _him_.) He later implied that all men talk that way behind closed doors (locker talk). I think that’s appalling. He paid a porn star an amount that would be a good year of pay for most folks just to keep her quiet. Almost half the voters wanted him to stay president.
The definition I like is equal protection under the law. If a religious body wants to say marriage only in same race or in different sex then fine. But that is not government and commerce. Government is to be outside of religion – at least that’s the idea – so that government cannot choose favorites. Commerce can’t say whites only. They used to be able to. I am glad that definition to tell things apart is gone.