The Gay Marriage Question

Now that the California Supreme Court has spoken about gay marriage, it’s time for conservatives to think.

What is it that we want? Apart from our natural conservative instinct that warns us against the innovation of gay marriage, what really is our problem?

And we should also think: what do the advocates of gay marriage want? Marriage activist Maggie Gallagher asks this latter question.

Given that the California Supreme Court (and the US Supreme Court with its Guantanamo Bay decision) demostrates that the elite’s commitment to judicial activism is still at full speed ahead, we should look at what advanced legal circles are thinking on marriage, she writes.

If a court can rule that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right (i.e., one deeply rooted in our nation’s traditions) then it can make up anything. Elite legal minds get to figure out what they think and break it to the rest of us once they’ve decided.

What the elite has decided, Maggie thinks, is that “gay is the new black.” That means that opponents to the gay agenda will be treated like the old racist South.

[O]nce the principle is in the law, the next step will be to use the law to stigmatize, marginalize, and repress those who disagree with the government’s new views on marriage and sexual orientation.

That is what they are doing in Canada already, of course. That is why Mark Steyn and Maclean’s were up before the British Columbia human rights tribunal for saying hateful things about Muslims.

In my view this progressive tide still has a ways to run. It may start to ebb if it starts if it has negative effects on the liberal elite. But that is unlikely. More likely would be the total destruction of the poor.

No, our best hope is women. All the stuff about equal rights and love in the context of marriage is a misunderstanding of marriage as a social institution, and pretty soon women are going to figure it out.

Society needs marriage because women need marriage. Women need marriage because they need a social system to bind the father of their children to them. This gives them two advantages. It protects them from sexual predation, and it provides resources for their children.

The last century has been an outlier, as women emerged from millennia of subsistence living, when all their effort was focused on bearing and raising children. Their first impulse was to liberate themselves, the “victims of the species,” from their enslavement to the three Ks, kuche, kirche, kinder.

They liked the welfare state; they liked the benefits; they liked the idea of getting away from an abusive husband. Then they liked the idea of getting away from a spouse that wasn’t sensitive to their needs for conversation and companionship.

One day soon we will see this century-long tide crest and start to recede.

Because you can make a pretty good argument that, objectively, women get treated best by a system of lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage. Right now educated, professional young women are beginning this trend. Before too long it will penetrate down into the mass culture. More and more women will start to say, regarding children, that “three is the new two,” and that careers are for the birds.

If you want three children, then you need a husband.

Who Gives and Who Takes?

Who knew? Back in 2006 Arthur C. Brooks published Who Really Cares? It was a study about giving to charity. Guess who gave most, as a percentage of income? Right first time. The working poor who went to church. Who gave least? Right again. Secular liberals. Conservatives? Well, conservatives give more than liberals, and not just to church, but to secular charities as well.

Now comes Peter Schweizer with Makers and Takers. It extends our understanding of Americans beyond charitable giving and paints a broader picture of conservative virtue and liberal selfishness. Dr. Paul Kengor interviewed Schweizer.

Schweizer’s idea was to find out if conservatives were really as mean-spirited as the media reports.

[T]here is a stereotype in the media about conservatives. Basically, anyone who is conservative and holds traditional values is considered greedy, angry, authoritarian, intolerant, and selfish. I wanted to look at actual research and determine whether this was true.

Short answer: it’s not true.

The research shows that conservatives are much more outward-oriented and liberals tend toward looking at themselves. There is a sense of entitlement on the left. They are concerned with rights, but not responsibilities. The data clearly shows that.

One of the things Schweizer discovered is that more liberals think it is OK to lie.

I think it goes back to the idea of absolute truth vs. relative truth. Modern liberals are much more likely to believe that truth is relative. So if you believe truth is relative, doesn’t it make sense that you would be more likely to say honesty is a subjective thing?

And of course, as we already know, conservatives give more to charity than liberals. It even applies to high-profile conservatives and liberals.

I compare the charitable giving of Rush Limbaugh with that of Nancy Pelosi. The data is quite shocking. It will surprise a lot of people to know that Rush is not only more generous but he gives to people with real needs. Pelosi gives to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and to elite prep schools.

Really though, what is so surprising? We already know all this. Still, repetition is everything. So let’s summarize all this:

I don’t believe that liberalism really does seek the collective good. I think that modern liberalism is so attractive to people because it is an emotionally satisfying belief system that really doesn’t require much from you. Modern liberalism allows you to outsource your responsibilities. The government will take care of the less fortunate. All you need to do is vote for the right candidate and support government programs. Other than that, you are off the hook.

Makes sense to me. But, excuse me for a moment while I catch up with my charitable giving!

Liberal Lawyers Notch Another One

To conservatives the decision of the US Supreme Court to give the detainees at Guantanamo Bay access to US courts seems utterly foolish. Hey, why not let prisoners of war clog up the courts?

Actually the lefty lawyers have a simple principle. Equality. That was the justification that Erwin Chemerinsky gave in his support of the California State Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage. If heterosexuals could have marriage then equality demanded that homosexuals should too.

So it makes sense to lefties that the helpless prisoners at Guantanamo should have equal access to US courts. Equality.

Then, of course, there is the knee-jerk anti-Americanism of the left-wing bar. Writes conservative Mark Levin:

It has been the objective of the left-wing bar to fight aspects of this war in our courtrooms, where it knew it would have a decent chance at victory.

The problem for conservatives in all this is that, so great is the respect for law in the United States that respect is given to the law even when lefties are using it in their century-long campaign to destroy middle-class civil society.

That is why I say, Bring It On. With conservatives exhausted after 25 years in power, it is natural and inevitable that there should be an interregnum in which the left surges once more.

But I am confident that once the American people see what the left wants, and experience the results of leftist jurisprudence and legislation, they will reject it.

In other words, there is nothing shameful about a tactical, or even a strategic retreat.

But as we retreat let us keep our conservative coalition together. It is not just a three part coalition of social conservatives, economic conservatives, and national security conservatives, remember. It’s a six part coalition. And we need to keep it together.

If we stay together then, in four, or eight years, we will surge to victory and begin a new era of practical conservative reform.

McCain Clueless on Energy

Is John McCain really clueless on energy? Or is he just pretending?

He talked the liberal line on energy on the Today Show today. Said McCain:

The real key to this is nuclear power, alternate energy. We’ve got to, er, solar, wind, tide, develop batteries. We have to embark on a national mission, a national mission to become energy independent.

So Matt Lauer jumps in and prompts him on the move away from oil. Oh yes, says McCain, we’ve got to move away from oil and the technology is there to do it. And there’s not much we can do about oil, not with the limited supply and a cartel controlling it. And McCain thinks that energy prices could respond in the short term to a good plan on nuclear power and battery technology.

Oh really Senator.

In that case we might as well have Senator Obama as president. If you are not going to champion the free market in energy and if you are going to promote government-centric approaches like wind, solar, batteries, and nuclear power, what’s the point of voting for a Republican?

There is plenty of oil out there. In Alaska, off the continental shelves, in oil shale. Oh yes. Oil shale. There is a huge amount of oil shale in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Only Democrats are preventing Big Oil from developing it. We could be developing all this stuff. Only the greens tell us that it will melt the ice in Greenland, although the truth is that nobody knows. Democrats believe in this, and that is why they are united in opposing the development of hydrocarbon resources in the United States.

It looks like the greenie global warming faith is going to have to be proved against cold, hard experience. In that case, we may as well have a true believer in the White House as a muddle like John McCain.

The D'Oh-bama Factor

You have to wonder, as Barack Obama stumbles from one gaffe to another. Is he really up to the job?

In the last few months we’ve had the flap over Reverend Wright and serial statements that became inoperative. Then we had Father Pfleger. Now we have the Case of the Clintonoid Retreads.

That’s what we are talking about when we look at the chaps that Sen. Obama selected to vet vice-presidential nominee candidates.

Obama selected three people to serve on his VP committee: Eric Holder, Jim Johnson, and Caroline Kennedy.

Two of those people have ethical problems. It was Eric Holder who is reported to have waved through the controversial pardon of Marc Rich at the fag end of the Clinton administration. And Jim Johnson was CEO of government-sponsored-enterprise Fannie Mae at the start of its problems with reckless use of derivatives and questionable earnings reports. He got loans at favorable rates from Countrywide Financial Corp.

Now all these problems may just be political noise, the product of the evil Republican Noise Machine.

But when you are an experienced national politician you and your staff have your radar detecting these sorts of things. Holder and Johnson are tainted. No sensible candidate with a competent staff would have chosen these chaps to serve on a sensitive, high-profile committee. Especially a sensible candidate who was determined to change the status-quo game in Washington DC.

Liberals are Different From You and Me...

It’s like the old saying: “The rich are different from you and me. They have more money.”

So it makes sense that liberals are different from you and me. They do more whining.

Liberals whine more about everything, according to a review of the social science literature by Peter Schweizer.

A wide body of research shows that modern liberals are much more likely to complain about things in their lives. Conservatives are more content with their lives. When asked “How satisfied are you with life these days?[”] Sixty-six percent of conservatives said “very satisfied” compared with only 46 percent of liberals. Conservatives are more likely to say they love their jobs (53 percent vs. 41 percent) and even enjoy their hobbies more (63 percent vs. 51 percent). When asked by the Social Capital Survey whether they were satisfied with their income, liberals were more than three times as likely to say “not at all satisfied” — even when they earned the same as conservatives.

You expect that especially when it comes to housework, liberals whine more. Indeed “feminist women do less housework than traditional women — but complain more about it. ”

It makes sense that the champion whiners, Barack and Michelle Obama, should be heading up the Democratic Party. It takes whiners to lead a party of whiners.

Many observers believe that Barack Obama secured the liberal base of the Democratic party because he was antiwar from the beginning. But I think it’s because he mastered the art of complaining and won over the Whine Caucus. Today the Democratic party is dominated by groups making claims of victim status ” blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, unwed mothers, artists, pampered academics, environmental activists, the poor, the unemployed, animal rights activists, women, homosexuals.

You might ask, what does a guy who graduated from Harvard Law School married to a woman with degrees from two Ivy League schools have to whine about?

It’s a good question. I’m afraid I don’t have the answer. Beyond the fact that they are liberals.

Left Doesn't Like Free Speech

Everyone is properly outraged at the quasi-legal proceedings of the British Columbia Human Rights Commission in the case brought by Muslim extremists against Mark Steyn and MacLean’s, the Canadian newsmagazine.

Some Muslims disliked the excerpt from Steyn’s book America Alone published in MacLean’s a while back. But they didn’t think to sue in regular courts. Oh no, that would cost money. Instead they brought MacLean’s up on a charge of hate speech at three separate Canadian human rights tribunals. Last week their complaint was heard before the British Columbia Human Rights Commission.

Today, the editors of National Review properly express their outrage against the proceedings of the Commission last week in Vancouver, BC. You can get a flavor of their outrage from this:

Andrew Coyne, a journalist with Maclean’s, live-blogged the farce; his dispatches were as amusing as they were harrowing. The proceedings had no evidentiary rules — new evidence was routinely introduced without warning. Commissioners routinely recessed to determine the eligibility of evidence; legal representation would dash off mid-hearing to print Internet material to introduce as evidence; an “expert” witness was called whose chief credentials were academic papers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and still other witnesses were called under the prejudicial direction that “we anticipate that success in this case will provide the impetus for prohibiting discriminatory publications in the other provinces.”

At the granddaddy Human Rights Commission of them all, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, they have what you might call a remarkable record in the fight against the violation of human rights: “in 31 years, the CHRC has not once dismissed a charge that has been brought before it.”

It’s fun and enjoyable, isn’t it, when you can gin up your own private witch-hunting tribunal to punish people for opinions you don’t like. It confirms what we all know, but are usually too polite to say.

Lefties really don’t like free speech. Indeed, they way they see it, anything they don’t like comes under the rubrick of “hate speech,” and they have an ethical obligation to stamp it out. Why not? If you have the power, use it.