Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Friday, April 17. 2015

Destruction and deconstruction of traditional social institutions

Sultan offers The Deconstruction of Marriage and deconstruction in general. A quote:



The left's deconstruction of social institutions is not a quest for equality, but for destruction. As long as the institutions that preceded it exist, it will go on deconstructing them until there is nothing left but a blank canvas, an unthinking anarchy, on which it can impose its perfect and ideal conception of how everyone should live.

Equality is merely a pretext for deconstruction. Change the parameters of a thing and it ceases to function. Redefine it and expand it and it no longer means anything at all. A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but if you change 'rose' to mean anything that sticks out of the ground, then the entire notion of what is being discussed has gone and cannot be reclaimed without also reclaiming language.



Other topics there, but I can say that, without my marriage of many years, my life would be terrible. To each his or her own, though. Invent your own life if you want, and go for it! Just do not ask me to pay your bills because I have organized my life to pay my own.

Posted by The Barrister in Our Essays, Politics at 16:06 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I think this applies to only a minority of those seeking to allow gay marriage. Far more common is a vague sympathy for underdogs, and oversentimental regard for "love" meaning temporary and largely physical attraction. There are also those who take a principled stand that "fairness" or "live and let live"should trump most values. People don't think so clearly as Greenfield accuses them of. They are led around. There are those who have precisely the goals he outlines (even some who believe they have kinder motives), but they aren't the majority.
#1 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2015-04-17 16:32 (Reply)
More common (for better or worse) is like me: I don't care. Just leave me alone.
#1.1 Bird Dog on 2015-04-17 16:44 (Reply)
I don't think he gets deconstruction.

Not that the left is any better at it.
#2 rhhardin (Link) on 2015-04-17 21:35 (Reply)
He's right about equality and deconstruction. Gay marriage doesn't bother me in the least, except that the debate is not about gay people wanting to get married. It's about socialists attacking traditional institutions. I think many conservatives (mainstream Americans) make the mistake of backing themselves into a corner defending what they feel is a conservative stance on marriage. Instead, I wish the GOP would make an offensive move, and at the same time embrace liberty, by declaring that marriage is something government should have no say in AT ALL. If you want to get married, go see a preacher. If you want a contract, go see an attorney.

I realize that I am simply rephrasing what Greenfield said, and more poorly. But, damn it, he's right. He's also one of the great essayist of our time. I love reading his work.
#3 Jack Walter on 2015-04-17 23:29 (Reply)
the government has to be involved in marriage in some way because a married couple is more than two people relating to each other, its the couple as an economic, property owing "entity" (or community property estate) vis a vis the rest of the world.

I don't buy into this doomsday whining. apart from religious overtones, which are no one's business, marriage is a default set of rights and obligations owed to the individuals in the marriage, the children and everyone else. a competent lawyer could recreate almost all of these rights and obligations with modern contract, real property, succession, trusts, etc.

Greenfield is usually spot on, but here he's just wrong. Unless he's proposing banning gays from entering into contracts or holding title to real property in certain ways, etc.
#3.1 The Poetry of Violence on 2015-04-18 03:40 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.