Friday Double Bill - II, Of Gay Marriage

Welcome back ladies, gentlemen and indeterminate life-forms in the back. For sake of social appearances I hope you are comfortable around here, and let’s just move on. In the second part (first part here) of this edition of LaS (i.e. Life and Something), we will discuss gay marriage. As some of you might be aware, in what is considered a major victory to proponents of same sex marriage in US, District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker overturned California proposition 8 an amendment which declared that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California”. According to the judge, proposition violated the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of United States constitution.

Not being an expert on American constitution, I will not dispute the legal reasoning behind the verdict. Also unlike most of the opponents of same sex marriage in US, I don’t think that legalization of same sex marriage is solely capable of destroying traditional marriage in US. Having said that, I think it is a bad idea, further it is latest in a series of bad ideas starting from no fault divorce, which have weakened marriage as a social institution. Even further this series of bad idea has its root in western notion of individualism.

To see why is that so, let’s begin by examining the two arguments in support of same-sex marriage, first is that traditional marriage is discriminatory in nature, that is ofcourse true but then so are almost all the relationships, state usually does not recognize a woman as father of her children, same way as much as a man may want he can not be mother of his children.

In short state doesn't define relationships, society does. State merely recognizes the societal definitions, for otherwise the legislation becomes needlessly convoluted. If tomorrow America society recognizes marriage between same sex couple, then state should follow the changed mores.

Here it is important to note that this issue is fraught with slippery slope, the argument presented above is usually countered by the supporters of same-sex marriage with the poser that whether same criteria of social acceptance should be applied to interracial marriage. To this the counter poser by opponents is if the criteria of non discrimination should also apply to incestuous or polygamous marriage. There is no satisfying argument to either of the posers, which is rooted in logic.

However where logic fails, observation comes to the rescue. The observation is this, any society, formed anywhere in world, since the beginning of civilization, has without exception defined marriage as a relationship involving one man and one woman.

The reason for this also answers the second argument in support of same sex marriage, which goes like this, "Just because same sex marriage is legal doesn't mean that normal couple with stop loving each other". The answer to this is, "What has marriage got to do with love ?". Marriage is about forming a committed, and hence stable familial unit. This is because almost all societies found out by hit and trial that a committed and stable familial unit, ceteris paribus, a. ensures the best upbringing of younger generation and b. is the most stable building block for larger society.

In other words, marriage is less about love of two individuals towards each other and more about claim of society towards individuals. When individuals reject any claim of society on them, which, in nutshell, is Individualism, the institution of marriage loses its raison d'etre, and from these its a long slide to irrelevance, aided by attempts to redefine it according to whatever the intellectual fashion of the day.

PS You know what just don't bother, read this post instead, from the archives of Jane Galt

Friday Double Bill - I, Of Ground Zero Mosque

A very good evening (or a very good whatever the hell your time zone is), to all the comatose readers of this blog (as evidenced by tepid response to previous post). In this edition of  LaS (i.e. Life and Something ), we will discuss the controversy surrounding, depending on who you ask, Ground zero mosque or Park51 community center, proposed in the hymietown. On second thoughts discussion is a very ambitious term, mostly because I don’t have much to say as opposed to, say greatbong. So let me make a brief remark. I don’t have strong opinion about the mosque one way or other, this is because I have no emotional stake in this particular situation, I am not an American much less a New Yorker, neither any of my near or dear ones met their ends on Ground Zero. It is possible people opposing the Mosque are really emotionally aggrieved, it is also possible that they are not enamored of Islam, a possibility which is further supported by the fact this opposition is not limited to the particular case but to any mosque in general. Now I can understand if Americans are wary of Islam, however my view regarding this remains as stated in earlier posts. If Islam is a problem to USA, denying legal rights of citizens is not going to solve it. Having said that what I find really puzzling, no make that mind boggling, is the insistence by supporter of Mosque that it actually is a step for tolerance and understanding. Now this may sound uncharitable, but the matter of fact is 9/11 was perpetrated in name of Islam, considering this, how in God’s name, construction of a mosque near to Ground zero is going to promote understanding! At best this is a case of tone-deafness, at worst however this may seem like pissing on grave of victims to many people who otherwise may not be intolerant to Islam. I suppose constructing a mosque is permitted by the law of the land, however to insist that mosque is a symbol of respect and harmony and to demand that other defer to this viewpoint is nothing short of sanction of the victim.

The PostDiluvian Creed

[This post is a result of  email exchange with Don Virmani]

Don raised an important query, one which has intrigued me for a long time. The query is this, despite the apparent contradiction in their world-view, why is left so enamored of Islam? Now  I don't have any definitive answer to that however to best of my understanding the alliance between left and Islam is similar to Molotov-Ribbentrop pact against a common enemy, the Kaffir.

That still doesn't make sense however, surely left realizes that as flawed as (according to them) capitalism (or in our case, Hinduism ) is, it is much more closer to left's vision than a life of abject terror under Islamic tyranny. Here we leave theory and enter the politics. These are just my speculations of course but they kind of make sense to me.

Conservative stalwart Buckley was dismissive of leftist projects, finding its goal of utopia on earth as absurc. He popularized a term for it immanentizing the eschaton. In my opinion he missed a much more pernicous instinct of left, I like to call it Post Diluvian instinct.

Much like Islam and Christianity, left is an inerrant ideology to its adherents, meaning it admits of no fault or incompleteness. This certitude combined with an excess of self regard makes the leftists highly intolerant towards any difference, especially when coming from (in their opinion) their intellectual inferior.

When this fanatic outlook collides with the reality of a social order based upon a differing ideology, the only conclusion open to leftist is that social order is immoral and corrupt, and only after the social order has been destroyed, a new man can rise free from the corrupting influence of earlier order. It is this new man who will be enlightened enough to recognize the historical inevitability, and thus initiate the social reconstruction as envisaged in the doctrine.

This is similar to what happened in legend of Noah. Left wants to bring paradise, but for that it first needs to bring a deluge.

A very HIMYM post

[In persona of Ted Mosby]

Kids,

Yeah I know you are not interested in finding out how I met your mother. In fact if I can be brutally frank after two seasons best described as lameass nobody really is, except for the suits, but they also killed Arrested Development, so there is that. Anyhow, this is not about how I met your mother, but a very brief comment on political strategy.


To be specific it's about the unpleasant situation that we find ourselves in Afghanistan. Let's start at the beginning in 2001 our country was attacked by people commonly described as fringe adherents to what is otherwise a religion of peace (and also of 72 virgins, with their hymen in mint condition, and not reconstructed by hymenoplasty). Understandably we decided to kick the bad guy’s ass, the bad guy being Taliban, less understandably we decided to spread some sweet democracy in the region.


Now this has proved to be difficult than we thought mostly because even as we were busy killing Taliban (and doing some collateral damage on the side) we were enthusiastically blowing dollars on Taliban’s BFF (i.e. Land of Pure) for a little striptease also known in strategic terms as frontline ally in terrorism. Now kids, trust me when I say Pakistan is the best striptease in town, it has got all the tricks under its sleeves to make sure that dollars keep on coming from its patrons. The matter of fact is, I could tell you all about it, but a brief comment simply won’t do any justice to it, so suffice it to understand it has been able to hold our “attention” for more than eight years. Now however we are having ache in our unmentionables, and therefore we are in a tearing hurry to withdraw. 


However the fact that we haven't been able to achieve anything we set out to in the first place is kind of embarrassing. We desperately need a face saving formula, luckily for Geo-politics provides us with exactly that.

In politics there are two ways to succeed. One to actually succeed (or as Whoopi Goldberg would describe it “succeed succeed”), the other is to redefine success to what was previously failure. This is what we are precisely going to do. Quite unexpectedly we have discovered that Taliban are not all bad, in fact there are quite a few gray areas lying between what we thought (and argued) were black and white. So there is good Taliban and when I say good I mean the faction which we expect will make totally insincere promises about negotiation and will observe a totally opportunistic ceasefire till the time we pack our bags and finish the job when public attention is towards a more pressing issue for example Miley Cyrus's thongs. 


And thus Team America will have royally screwed Afghanistan yet again.

Aphorism: Tragedy Of Iconoclast

And each becomes an Icon in his turn.

Aphorism: Fallacy Of Iconoclast.

I can not love abstract nor do I think can anyone else.