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The devil on our shoulder
Apr. 14th, 2006 10:21 amLance Mannion doesn't post as often as some other bloggers, but when he does, it's always worth reading:
Men are animals, says Brooks, but once upon a time the wiser of them knew their true natures and preached a gospel of stern self-discipline and moral vigilance. Then along came moral relativists---LIBERALS, in case you didn't know---who tore down the father figures who kept us in line. Next thing you know, there are strippers and underage drinking on campus and the poor misguided Duke lacrosse players are giving in to urges Liberalism robbed them of their defenses against.
This is the Right Wing Kulturkampf ur-myth restated. Once upon time we were all good and well-behaved, if plagued by demons and temptations within. You know, back in the day, when lynching was a spectator sport, children were worked to death in factories and mineshafts, and employers thought nothing of hiring goons to beat and kill workers who dared strike for safer working conditions and decent pay.
Then came the Fall, and with it moral relativism, post-modernism, Freudianism, Marxism, feminism, birth control, Roe v. Wade, situation comedies that make dad into a buffoon, and black people who expect to live in our neighborhoods and send their kids to our schools...whoops, did we say that last one out loud? We meant entitlements, the nanny state, and the culture of dependence brought about by Welfare.
[...]
But then Liberal bloggers are constantly arguing about right and wrong. Their Right Wing counterparts never do, because they know what's right and what's wrong. Wrong is Liberal. Right is them, and that's that.
Religious conservatives like to quote Dostoevsky, "Without God, all things are permitted." But really it's with God---when they think they have God on their side---that people permit themselves to do anything, as long as they are doing it to God's enemies, who, conveniently, are usually people in the way of the Believers' getting the worldly things they want.
David Brooks speaks for a class of people who mistake their privileges for morality. He tries to sound like a moralist, but there's not much in it but the old expression that the well-off and well-bred are somehow naturally well-behaved.
There is no tradition of self-examination or self-criticism supporting Conservatives' assumption of moral superiority, only a lazy assumption that having been born to it or having risen to it, a certain level of worldly success automatically confers a the fruits of a tradition of self-examination and self-criticism.
We are Christians, we are Americans, we are Conservative. Christians are good. Americans are good. Conservatives are good. Therefore we are good.
It's morality as an entitlement.
Men are animals, says Brooks, but once upon a time the wiser of them knew their true natures and preached a gospel of stern self-discipline and moral vigilance. Then along came moral relativists---LIBERALS, in case you didn't know---who tore down the father figures who kept us in line. Next thing you know, there are strippers and underage drinking on campus and the poor misguided Duke lacrosse players are giving in to urges Liberalism robbed them of their defenses against.
This is the Right Wing Kulturkampf ur-myth restated. Once upon time we were all good and well-behaved, if plagued by demons and temptations within. You know, back in the day, when lynching was a spectator sport, children were worked to death in factories and mineshafts, and employers thought nothing of hiring goons to beat and kill workers who dared strike for safer working conditions and decent pay.
Then came the Fall, and with it moral relativism, post-modernism, Freudianism, Marxism, feminism, birth control, Roe v. Wade, situation comedies that make dad into a buffoon, and black people who expect to live in our neighborhoods and send their kids to our schools...whoops, did we say that last one out loud? We meant entitlements, the nanny state, and the culture of dependence brought about by Welfare.
[...]
But then Liberal bloggers are constantly arguing about right and wrong. Their Right Wing counterparts never do, because they know what's right and what's wrong. Wrong is Liberal. Right is them, and that's that.
Religious conservatives like to quote Dostoevsky, "Without God, all things are permitted." But really it's with God---when they think they have God on their side---that people permit themselves to do anything, as long as they are doing it to God's enemies, who, conveniently, are usually people in the way of the Believers' getting the worldly things they want.
David Brooks speaks for a class of people who mistake their privileges for morality. He tries to sound like a moralist, but there's not much in it but the old expression that the well-off and well-bred are somehow naturally well-behaved.
There is no tradition of self-examination or self-criticism supporting Conservatives' assumption of moral superiority, only a lazy assumption that having been born to it or having risen to it, a certain level of worldly success automatically confers a the fruits of a tradition of self-examination and self-criticism.
We are Christians, we are Americans, we are Conservative. Christians are good. Americans are good. Conservatives are good. Therefore we are good.
It's morality as an entitlement.
