Robert Knight takes a hard look at the elite punditocracy’s slow slide into moral relativism:
On ABC’s This Week on May 30, [George] Will agreed with colleague Matthew Dowd that apart from a few glitches, homosexuality will soon be a non-issue in the military. . . .
Will: “For people of Matt’s son’s generation, being gay is like being left-handed. … The Supreme Court has a famous phrase it used in some opinion, the evolving standards of decency that mark a maturing society. Clearly these are evolving, and the case is over, basically.” . . .
What we are witnessing among the intelligentsia is a catastrophic case of groupthink: because they all repeat the same thing, it must be true. They ignore biology, morality, history, common sense, and grim health statistics because they are smarter than anyone.
Charles Krauthammer, who has written some of the best critiques of Obamacare and the rest of the Left’s assault on America , is also aboard the gay express. He’s smarter than God. So, too, are Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman, Weekly Standard columnist Stephen Hayes, Fox News analyst Margaret Hoover, and American Spectator columnist Phillip Klein, all of whom have called for repealing the military ban. Klein called it a “no-brainer.” . . .
You should read the whole thing. In the secular world of modern intellectualism, it is too easy to forget that not everyone is secular, worldly or modern. Not everyone is a professor, a journalist or a political operative, and not everyone feels obliged to kowtow to the latest intellectual fads.
What Knight calls intellectual “groupthink” means that viewpoints unpopular among the elite usually lack articulate advocates, and few things are currently less popular among the intelligentsia than “homophobia.” (Scare-quotes necessitated by the bogus diagnosis implied by that made-up word.) Just as with other issues, like immigration, the views of the articulate elite are opposed mainly by Ordinary Americans — people who live their lives outside the elite “bubble” — and those in political life risk ridicule and ostracism if they disagree too loudly with prevailing elite opinion.
What George Will says is true, in a limited sense: Young people are indeed more “gay-friendly” than their elders, because American youth have swum in a cultural ocean of “gay-friendly” messages for the past three decades. Whether it’s TV sitcoms or “tolerance” curricula in schools, the cumulative cultural effect is such that traditional moral strictures against homosexual behavior are seldom voiced except in the most conservative churches.
Despite the fact that more than 97% of Americans are heterosexual, the interests of the 2% gay minority are so actively advocated — in news media, in entertainment, in academia, in politics — that anyone in public life who says, “Hey, that’s wrong,” is instantly denounced. To invoke 3,000 years of Judeo-Christian moral teaching in a policy dispute is to invite the accusation of “hate” and “prejudice” and, without fail, to be diagnosed as suffering from that dreadfully disabling disorder, “homophobia.”
Well, it is neither hateful nor prejudiced nor psychotic to say that sin is sin. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23 KJV). Once politics enters into the equation, however, and sin is defined as a “right,” Americans become confused, as I explained in November 2008:
Because Americans are taught to think of “rights” as something sacred in our civic religion, those accused of violating “rights” are easily demonized, while those who advocate “rights” are sanctified. . . .
“Rights talk” allowed liberals a means of preemptively delegitimizing their opponents and thereby to avoid arguing about policy in terms of necessity, utility and efficacy. If all legal and political conflicts are about “rights,” there is no need to argue about the specific consequences of laws and policies. Merely determine which side of the controversy represents “rights” and the debate ends there.
George Will and his intellectual peers have surrendered to the inexorable logic of “rights.” The ultimate consequences of that surrender can only be imagined. (Marines marching hand-in-hand in the San Francisco Gay Pride parade?) To the intellectual elite, however, such consequences are of less concern than the difficulty of telling George Stephanopoulos, “I disagree.”
UPDATE: There’s a Memeorandum thread, and I’ve addressed the same topic from a somewhat different direction at the American Spectator, pointing out the predictable tendencies of radicalism.
Speaking of predictable, liberal blogger Ron Chusid has denounced me as being a member of the “American Taliban” and “the authoritarian right.”
Hey, I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night.
How is it “authoritarian” to argue for the continuation of a policy (“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”) instituted in 1993 by President Clinton?
The accusation is absurd, but perfectly illustrative of the intolerance inherent in radicalism. Merely disagree with them on matters of policy, and you are automatically compared to fanatical terrorists, accused of “hate” and “fear,” etc. And once they’ve grossly insulted you and impugned your good faith, they accuse you of “incivility.”
A new lesson in the bizarre nature of Europe’s “human rights” laws:
