Society's interest in marriage
Reading Maggie Gallagher today (link from The Corner) makes me realize I barely mentioned gay marriage in the last couple of posts.
One question here: has the pendulum swung too far from society protecting its "general" interests, including children and the future, to society protecting the more or less selfish interests of individuals?
It might be true that as recently as the 50s, there was a tendency for the majority (a bigger majority on some issues than others) to think and act as though individual and group/minority interests could be sacrificed, almost without a thought. To the extent that there was some thought, it would go: this will benefit society/the majority in the future. Whether or not children are "better off" in a traditional family, for example, society may find children who grew up that way useful--used to the idea of sharing, loyalty to a group, etc.
Now we seem more and more impressed if a group simply says: this is what we want, and the old ways prevented us from having it.
Libertarians seem to think we can and should strip political debate of metaphysics, including outdated, unnecessary or harmful religious and moral teachings, and what we have left will be "real" politics, or the essential relationship between government and individuals. In fact it seems they strip away politics, understood as anything other than the separate interests of discrete individuals. They want to take us morally back to the state of nature, but they obviously hope we won't literally end up there.
Some of the libertarians who are close to my heart have been warbloggers in recent months. Since the argument for the self-defence of the U.S. was always shaky, and has now come under more questions, have libertarians with war fever discovered that there is a common good, after all? Something that makes us want to sacrifice some of our noble young people so that our society as a whole--our children and grandchildren--can not only survive, but prosper?
|
