Is versus should be
Analysis and resignation have an interesting relationship
After a major news event, there’s always a plethora of “Five/Eight/Ten Takeaways From the Recent News Event”-type articles. They generally span the spectrum of left to right biases, and they make for great clickbait, with most clickers seeking to have their own biases confirmed rather than challenged.
There’s s a zone of consensus hovering over the spectrum’s center line on the really big looks at the lay of the land. The message is along the lines of “face it, all you who may either bristle at this or find it favorable; these developments are now permanent fixtures of the way we live.” Of course, there will still be hardcore viewpoints on the left and right outside those parameters, but a lot of people seem to accept a lot of things about our culture, politics and economics as givens.
I think this list covers much of what I’m talking about:
Most Americans are cool with at least early-development abortion.
The change to the thousands-year-old-definition of marriage wrought by Obergefell v Hodges is a done deal.
Social Security, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act are basically untouchable.
Adherence to the letter of the Constitution is going to fade as the nation becomes more demographically diverse.
Americans are going to keep getting more ambivalent about matters of ultimate reality (in other words, continuously less religious).
Centrally planned changes in energy production and consumption, in order to address a widely held view that the global climate is in trouble, are here to stay.
Coarseness in our discourse and in the products of our popular culture are here to stay.
As I say, there are points on the spectrum outside this consensus, but they’re not helpful in moving the needle. This is particularly true on the right. Calls for a return to decency and common sense are, at this late date, so bound up with the unfortunate phenomenon that has taken over what many - most? - perceive to be conservatism that nearly everybody else tunes them out. A successful politician/office holder like Ron DeSantis can wade into the culture wars, but only so far. As I’ve said elsewhere, he’s going to need to focus on the more mundane victories he's racked up in Florida so far, such as property insurance reform, and play it cool regarding successes such as parental involvement in education, and even his dustup with Disney. As he maneuvers onto the national stage, he's going to encounter the Left's vitriol big-time if he puts those issues front and center.
But at some point the matter of what is right - and here I’m not using that term in its political-spectrum sense, but rather as the opposite of wrong - has to be brought up by somebody.
Shall I take a stab at it?
Let me address each of the itemized “givens” listed above from that standpoint.
A fertilized ovum introduces a new soul into the human species, one every bit as precious as any other that currently lives, has ever lived, or is ever going to live. Looking out for his or her welfare is every bit as important as it is for your second-grade child, your feeble-but-beloved grandmother and your best friend.
Nobody anywhere in the world, at any point in human history, even remotely considered marriage to be anything but the union of male and female prior to, to be generous, the last 25 years at the outset. Any other view did not enter the minds of the crafters of the Fourteenth Amendment. All the world’s major religions - most importantly, Christianity (yes, I said it) - regard marriage as male-female union, and regard it as sacred, because it is how new human beings are supposed to be brought into the world.
Social Security and Medicare are awash in unfunded liabilities that, sooner rather than later, are going to put our government in a position where interest on the national debt consumes all spending, at the expense of basic Constitutional duties such as defense. The ACA is an unacceptable intrusion on freedom of choice.
The Constitution was crafted so as to accommodate the kinds of changes that the country has experienced in the years since (urbanization, industrialization, massive expansion). No other nation’s fundamental legal document is based on such careful thought about how to ensure ordered liberty.
God is sovereign. Jesus is Lord.
Any average warming of the global temperature bears watching, but is not a crisis and does not require abrupt, wholesale reversal of the advancement humankind has achieved over the last two centuries.
That coarseness has eroded norms such as modesty, civil disagreement and the minimal degree of decorum needed to carry on our public life. It’s left us embittered about the role of sexuality in human life, which has directly played out in declining marriage and childbirth rates. We’ve forgotten what loveliness and refinement are. It’s made our imaginations atrophy. Our vocabularies shrink. Our ability to spot and savor an exquisite turn of phrase fades.
There is, of course, the need to acknowledge that the first set of itemized observations do indeed look like givens. One has to begin dealing with anything by realistically assessing the environment in which one is maneuvering.
But analysis merely gets us that far. It doesn’t address what our internal moral barometers know to be so about the universe.
That’s what is most lamentable about the conflating of concern for our present juncture with the yay-hoo-ism that has assumed such an overwhelming profile among those not ready to throw up their hands and resign themselves to this state of affairs.
The task before the rest of us among the concerned is going to require patience. This is going to be a long game. It’s also going to require faith. See the point above about God.
But I daresay that there is a considerable swath of the populace that will respond favorably to a clarion call from voices that have a proven track record of deep inquiry and contemplation. A lot of people, I think, can be convinced that we ought to apply the brakes before our front wheels are over the edge of the precipice.