metonymy4u

I fear that our country’s founding on classical liberal ideals of equality, self-interest and the rule of law has doomed us all to the mediocrity of ” Sorry, not my job, –I just work here.” Nothing exemplifies this tendency more than the pathetic attempt to adjudicate major moral questions (like same-sex marriage and abortion) on such flimsy notions as equality and privacy, referring them as per usual to some fantasy world of natural rights and liberty. What garbage! Marital opportunities and freedom of reproductive choice are not a matter of rediscovering yet again a nonexistent “right” to equality or privacy, which neither exist nor, apparently, command any sort of respect from governments subjected to even the mildest of exigent circumstances. We would be far better served to consider such questions a matter of civic virtue, a concept which owes nothing whatsoever to the delusion of natural right and consequently cannot by that fallacy be assailed. Civic virtues, in this case the demand for compassion and restraint of political cruelty, by which means alone do we preserve our ability to coexist in community, are the true touchstones of opportunity and due process–our duty to protect and nurture one another. As we have seen time and again, laws alone do not protect people. Ultimately only other people can do that.