Thursday, December 21, 2006
Alan Keyes was Right, Just like Dan Quayle
Alan Keyes was right! Remember the 'Dan Quayle was Right' article about his comments on the cultural corruption example of Murphy Brown? Well it turns out that Alan Keyes was also right, and not so appreciated at the time of his commentary. He was right about homosexuality, gay marriage, and the activism and modeling of the Cheney link in the Bush administration. How does this advisor's role not undermine his social conservatism and stance on gay marriage? It does. Its fine for him to keep Lynn and Dick Cheney but Mary needs to be totally out of the administration loop officially and unofficially. I'm not saying rudeness or mean-spirited-ness but being frank. She's the one continually pushing the envelope with her live-in gay lover and now with her having an IV baby as a gay couple. Come on! In an age when thousands of one man and one woman, relatively intact married couples wanting children, waiting to adopt, going overseas for such and spending tons of money, how is this high profile experimentation culturally helpful. Mary's removal from access doesn't need to be super high profile, but it needs to happen and be known as having happened. Such is overdue. She will just continue to push the envelope in the wrong directions and it is an example, frankly worse than Murphy Brown.
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4 comments:
I think there is much to be said about the decay of our culture in general. Moral issues are now routinely dragged into the political realm, which is a disaster.
I found it interesting that Bill O'Reilly used the term "bread and circuses" last night, as I have been using that to describe things for some time. As Rome and other great civilizations rotted from within, so are we. And what are the churches doing? The churches are increasingly off into lunatic fringe social issues and compromising their prophetic witness.
The sad thing is..if the Gospel is proclaimed (Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead for our justification), and the Gospel is believed i.e. saving faith, then the social ills are resolved in due course. That escapes many of our learned clergymen these days.
I mean no disrespect when I say this, but many of your journal entries are playing off of a slippery slope fallacy.
What are you even saying here? Are you proposing Mary Cheney be taken out of the public spotlight? (I'm still waiting to find one argument within your post.) Read this:
http://www.slate.com/id/2156033/ NO, REALLY, READ THAT!!!!!!!!!!!
COME ON, JUST READ IT; IT IS SHORT. Now, come back and try to make an argument of why Mary Cheney is acting immorally. You won't be able to. (Solameanie either...)
The slippery slope fallacy is in fact a logical fallacy and not-so persuasive as an argument and often laughable as a stand-alone argument. Ikhu, thanks for your observations.
Part of the challenge with values voters is that often the 'slope' of the slippery slope argument can be viewed in hindsight. Roe v Wade was just to reverse State laws to legalize abortion in the first trimester. Alas in hindsight we see it did so for the 2nd trimester, then the 3rd, then dumbed down the definition of health to include any angst, and has now given us partial birth infanticide and a Presidential candidate who apparently endorses some level of early infanticide.
It doesn't make the slippery slope argument by itself or in any other form, any more persuasive. But again in hindsight one must wear interesting lenses to not see the slopes and how far we have regressed.
Likewise on the values voter issue of gay marriage. In my community a fairness in housing and hiring gay rights ordinance was cast as a mere fairness in hiring and housing issue. The day after the ordinance passed the university President here decried that it did not go far enough to legitimize and legalize gay marriage. Activist do tend to 'push the envelope' and they tend to demonize their opponents with charges that they are trying to set up a theocracy and such.
I think we are lightyears in the opposite direction of any theocracies. I do not know a single evangelical personally or read the book of one, who wanted the USA to become a theocratic State. I have heard this argument used about evangelicals and it seems to be a mix of fear pedaling, the fallacy of extension, and a bit of the slippery slope as well.
The fact that slopes of societal standard slippage are clearly viewable, doesn't mean that those who point out such are utilizing a slippery slope argument or demonizing Mary Cheney. Neither does such deny that more men are rapists than women. It does not state that gay couples having IV babies and adoptions are a weapon of mass societal destruction the Slade article Mr. Carpenter references attempts to charge. It just simply is not as good as a two parent family where there is a responsible adult committed from each sex, Mom and Dad, husband and wife. I'm not sure saying such is as radical as some are letting on.
I think Mary has been pushing the envelop. It may be that she has pushed it as far as she wants it to go first with the lover, then the IV baby, then child raising as a gay couple. I would find it remarkable in these IV preganancy, gay couple child raising contexts to believe she is not advocating gay marriage as well.
That said of course she has a right to making such positions personally and politically. She can lobby for them and such.
But I will stand by my view that if an administration does not want to encourage normalization or legalization of gay marriage that they should not have Mary Cheney involved in their group of advisors about such issues. Is saying such employing a slippery slope argument?
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