- Won the battle. Will we lose the war?
- And now for something completely counter-hegemonic
- Designing better than they know
- [Mumble] Amazon retreat [Grumble]
- How does a “Moral Matrix” form?
In the wake of Hobby Lobby, I’m surprised at progressive insouciance about religious liberty, but well-nigh astounded that there actually are calls for repealing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Professor Marci Hamilton continues her misguided campaign that the Act violates the Establishment Clause.
And so deep is the sense of entitlement to employer-provided contraceptive coverage in some quarters that this campaign or something similarly insidious may prevail.
When I got the news that a sister-in-law got pregnant during an October honeymoon, I chided my brother that he had reversed the god-given order of “barefoot in the winter, pregnant in the summer.” (I was, of course, joking, but one must say that these days, it seems.) That order was one that men were to enforce, as in “keep ’em barefoot” etc.
Fast forward X decades. Now the order is for employers to keep ’em chained to their workstation and chemically infertile year-round. And the National Organization of Some Women is outraged if a retailer pays far superior wages, gives every employee Sunday off, but eschews for religious reasons providing 20% of gubbiment-approved infertility chemicals and devices.
Or, as one might put it at greater length, since when is it “health care” to disrupt the normal functioning of the human body, since when is it liberation to have your body chemically altered the better to serve your employer without surcease, and has anyone else noted that it’s always women who get that treatment?
In a similar vein, has anyone stopped to wonder why “conservative” corporate interests have so quickly gotten on board with same-sex marriage? A verbatim report from a fly on the Boardroom wall: “Never another accidental pregnancy, and all we have to do is extend benefits similar to those we already give unreliable female breeders! Is this a great country or what!?”
Can you say “wage slave”? I thought you could!
It is true that the overwhelming majority of New Urbanists are liberal. It should also be noted and acknowledged that, as Smith says, “Good ideas are good ideas, and identifying them with one team or the other just invites gridlock and polarization — which, as you may have noticed, we have plenty of these days.” But once we set Richard Florida’s “creative class” pablum to the side, it becomes apparent that when it comes to New Urbanism, progressives are designing better than they know.
(Jonathan Coppage, The Conservatism of New Urbanism)
My high dudgeon at Amazon may have been misguided.
So the question is: What triggers the formation of [one of Jonathan Haidt’s] “moral matri[ces]” that becomes for a given person the narrative according to which everything and everyone else is judged?
Alan Jacobs, The Righteous Mind and the Inner Ring. Good reading on an important topic. H/T Rod Dreher, who muses about why he scored low on one of the most distinctive conservative traits. Jacobs is on a roll.
This is much bigger than the length of this item might suggest. I just don’t want to pull the same Jacobs quote Dreher judiciously pulled.
* * * * *
“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 