Peg pointed me this way, and I really enjoyed nodding in agreement. Of course, I have long nodded in agreement with Megan. Especially on these:
2) Gay marriage. I’m basically pro, but I take the Burkean arguments seriously.
3) Immigration. Again, I’m pro–but while I think the anti-immigration side makes often ridiculously ahistorical arguments about how current immigration differs from past waves, I think that more-open-borders folks like me don’t give enough respect to the real cultural frictions that immigration causes.
[…}
5) Taxes. I don’t have any very well thought out position on the optimal level of taxation in society. I take seriously both the justice arguments of the libertarian absolutists, and the notion that anyone living in a wealthy society owes their prosperity at least as much to the wealthy society as they do to their own skill and hard work–and if you doubt this is true, I suggest you go try to deploy your rugged individualist talents in Zimbabwe. I think society has a duty to care for those who genuinely can’t care for themselves, but I am against an ever-expanding notion of what constitutes “can’t”.
6) Intergenerational equity. I don’t mean social security, which I think is largely a stupid program. I mean questions about how we should privilege the interests of people who exist now over those who will exist in the future. The environment is the most obvious, but not the only, area where these questions come up. To me, health care is another one; the core issue is that we can probably help some people by moving to a single payer system today, but only by destroying the innovation machine that will help many many more people down the road.
7) Humanitarian intervention. I am often tempted by the isolationist stance, the cool purity of its single-rule decision making. Then another Darfur rends my heart. I don’t mean to address the prudential, utilitarian calculus, but rather the question: if there’s a good chance that we could make things better, should we? And under what circumstances?
If you get a chance, follow that link to Megan’s “Burkean arguments” because it’s really well though out. In fact, I read it when she first wrote it and it made me think a lot then. I guess I’ve somewhat softened my position since then (to basically not caring one way or the other about it), but those arguments are what undergird my “anti” thoughts. Now that some states have passed laws allowing gay marriage, I look forward to seeing what happens. It may be that nothing changes in the way people view marriage, and that the law adapts gracefully (I have my doubts), and if so then the other states will eventually follow suit. I hope that’s how it turns out. If not, well, that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish …
It was a fabulous article.
I’m not particularly opposed even to allowing poly sorts to marry. Curiously, I seem to run into polyamorists on what seems to be a regular basis, and they make good arguments. It’s hard enough living with one spouse that I tend to secretly think they’re deluded about poly as a stable arrangement but even then the people I’ve known haven’t made any claim that it’s something people are equally suited for either… so who knows, maybe they really can manage it even if I never could. Who am I to say?
But what I’ve noticed, at least in those people I have met, is that what they are desiring and seeking is really and truly a permanent intermingling of lives between all parties. In other words… they want to be MARRIED.
And that’s what convinces me.
I read through the comments after Megan’s post and it was disheartening. No one could articulate what marriage does for society or for individuals. In fact, as often as not people on either side were saying that marriage just isn’t very important anymore.
Her example of exchanging the profound life change, identity change even, in the simplest civil ceremony in years past, for better or worse, for the present elaborate and bankrupting affairs that signify almost nothing at all… it was apt, and very sad.
We don’t give away the bride, she’s her own person before the ceremony and after, and the groom doesn’t *really* have any additional responsibility or obligations just because he wears a ring. For better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health… standards never quite lived up to for certain, but the ideal was there… marriage now seems a legal entanglement and not much more and the promises aren’t just given up when the “worse”, “poorer” or “sickness” happen but simply when something better comes along.
I suppose that my point, which I lost along the way was… if there are people who actually want to be MARRIED maybe gay marriage will strengthen marriage and help to restore it. I don’t know if that would happen without actual activism toward that end, but to me it seems every bit as likely a result as anything else.
*sigh* … activism toward valuing marriage and recovering the *binding* of lives as something that is important…
I hope that was more clear.
Gay marriage is simply the final mile in our national journey away from sex discrimination started by the suffrage movement. That movement, unlike the social feminists movements of today, wasn’t out to sweeten the pot of rights and privileges awarded American women, it instead moved to eliminate the legal differences of their civil rights from the civil rights given men. Legally, removing he sexual requirements from state marriage brings marriage law in line with the rest of our modern, sexless common law. Is equality before the law Burkean?
yours/
peter.