'Liberal' 'Morality'

Mark Richards (Oz Conservative): Ch.6 Morality -- this is a long post, and well worth your read.

Though, keep in mind that Mr Richards' desideratum reduces to something very close to fascism, for Mr Richards would subordinate the individual to the group, with the 'group' defined in terms of the ethnos. What I am saying is that, in the end, regardless of his undoubted hatred of leftism, Mr Richards is really a leftist, after all.

Addendum: Now, the thing about the 'ethnos', as about 'society' and even about 'the government', is that it is an anthropomorphic reification: it is a fictional person, but there is no person there, in fact. So, when one tries to reify "the group", so that "the group" may "speak" and subordinate the individual, what one is always doing is trying to subordinate all the individuals of the group to some small number of them.

Boyd Richard Boyd (at 'American Thinker'): The Ethics of Sacrifice, the Politics of Slavery

True conservatism recognizes that the individual and the group both have moral claims on us: that the individual has moral claims on the group, and upon other individuals, and that the group has moral claims on the individual, and upon all individuals. True conservatism is about finding and holding the proper balance between the various absolutisms, any one of which will destroy us, individually or collectively or both. True conservatism can be sought only via morality and justice; ultimately, only via a correct view of man ... and of God.

In the end, everything always comes back to God, which is only to be expected, as God is "the ground of all being" and the origin of all things.

There is an interesting paradox here -- moral absolutists are free to be relativists about everything else, but moral relativists must end up being absolutists about everything ... except, perhaps, sexual activity (*).


(*) and I'm not so sure that, in the end, they must not be absolutists there, too -- Kathy Shaidle has made the cynical and satirical (**) joke that in a few years, the only way that strapping heterosexual men will be able to publically prove they are not closet "homophobes" is to certify that they suck cock. I can see leftism going there ... and all the "liberals" (who are just their sock-puppets, anyway) going right along with them.

(**) 'satirical' in the sense that it's impossible to satirize about what absurdities leftism will toss out, for it always proves your imagination far too limited

I am her equal

"...I am her equal" ... by which the poor pussy whipped shlubb really means, "She is my superior" (h/t Mark Richardson)

It's not just 'feminists'

It's not just 'feminists' who "think" in the way described, but also most (incorrectly) self-identified conservatives -- Mark Richardson: How does an Oxford feminist decide moral issues?

I've often said that feminism is liberalism applied to the lives of women. And at the heart of liberalism is autonomy theory: the belief that autonomy is the overriding good that defines us as human. Therefore, feminism seeks to maximise the autonomy of women.

Sarah Pine is a young feminist at Oxford University. Her comments on two controversies at the university illustrate her commitment to autonomy theory.

The most recent one concerns a dating guide:

A Guide To Dating Posh Girls warns its readers of modest means that a partner from the upper echelons will have had so much sex she has ‘duly worked her way through the Eton rugby team’

Sarah Pine's response was this:

Treating women like objects that lack any autonomy in who they date or sleep with is outdated and boring.

So she isn't concerned to defend the reputation of the posh women being commented on; her focus instead is that there might be a negative connotation to the idea of promiscuity - a limitation on the autonomous choice of women to sleep with however many men they like. ...

Incorrectly self-identified conservatives (*) will *always* defend the "right" of "strong, independent" womyn (**) to behave as sluts against the right of the rest of us to honestly say what they are when they do.

(*) who are actually "liberals" (as that word is currently used in America), for they implicitly and uncritically subscribe to the premises of "liberalism"; they incorrectly imagine they are conservatives because they do not (yet) want to go to all the places that the logic of those "liberal" premises dictates they must. But, they will, in time.

(**) who are so "strong" and "independent" that they collapse like wet tissue paper when they encounter views they don't like to have expressed, much less when they encounter reality, and who need those "white knights" to defend them against trogs like me.

JMSmith makes a good comment to Mr Richardson's post:

Perhaps you should say that feminism is liberalism applied exclusively to the lives of women. In the comments of the lady philosopher, for instance, a young woman is free to "work her way through the Eaton rugby team," but the writer of the dating guide is not free to register the fact. Likewise, a female prostitute is free to exploit her customers, but her pimp is not free to exploit the female prostitute.

The first example is especially interesting. Whose autonomy is to be protected? That of the slut, or of the slut shammer? ...

Promiscuity does plenty of harm, and yet liberalism defends it. Censoriousness of promiscuity seeks to avert this harm, and liberalism condemns it [the public disapproval of promiscuity and shaming of promiscuous persons]. Why is this?

Truro Cathedral

Mark Richardson, Oz Conservative: Truro Cathedral -- do check out the video at the end of the post.

Liberalism *is* a cultural suicide pact

Gentle Reader may recall that I sometimes say, in response to some "liberal" misrepresentation of Christianity, that "Christianity is not a [cultural/mutual] suicide pact." In the following piece, Mr Richardson shows, quite simply, that "liberalism" is a cultural mutual suicide pact --

Mark Richardson (Oz Conservative): Identity lite [either I originally messed up the link, or blogger did when I tried to get rid of a pornbot's post]

How America Got All Modern And Found Her Groove

When I was home in Indiana for Christmas, I was trying to explain to one of my sisters how in America 'liberal' came to be a synonym for 'socialist.' I don't think she really followed; perhaps I didn't explain well.

In any event, prior to about a century ago, 'liberal' was used to mean something very similar to what "conservative" means in America. It still is used with that meaning that in Europe ... which is why the Communists of the (thank God!) now-extinct USSR were always on tirades about the "evils" of liberalism (*) ... and why (I'm going on memory here, and I can't find a link to better explain the situation), a few years ago in France, when it looked as though Le Pen might win the national election, a prominant French politician said, "The battle is between the social and the liberal."

This recent article on 'National Review Online' goes into how that change-of-meaning came about -- John Dewey and the Philosophical Refounding of America


(*) When I was a youngster, before I'd learned what the term 'liberal' really means, when I mistakenly thought 'liberalism' was synonymous with 'socialism,' it always quite confused me when I'd read accounts of some Soviet rant about liberals or liberalism.

At the same time, Mark Richardson, of the 'Oz Conservative' blog makea a good case that (modern and/or post-modern) socialistic "liberalism" is a natural out-working of the flaws inhernet in the "classical liberalism" of John Stewart Mill, et al.