The Only Real Reason American Conservatives Fear Gay Marriage

“The most effective form of police state is one in which the masses police themselves.”

Wives and children are little policemen.  Miniature Stasi agents.  Watching your—and more importantly, making you watch your own--every movement.

That, in a nutshell is it.  No more no less.  The traditional family model’s importance is solely the control of potential political subversion. 

They don’t care about Biblical injunctions against sodomy.  Hell, they’ve got the Vatican anchoring their side.  And last time I heard, Pope Benedict XVI was forced to resign due to pressure from a powerful cabal of high-level sodomists. 

Also, check out George Rekers' ‘stache.  A real Freddy Mercury type of thing going on there.  The Protestants are no better than the Catholics on this one.

I had the poor fortune recently of spending four hours at a local watering hole listening to an old college buddy of mine go on and on (and on and on) about how sh*tty his life was, how the boss was an *sshole, and how all he got at home from the old lady were complaints and insults, whining about how his crappy salary didn’t give them enough to meet the bills, and how the kids were always coming down with some bug or another and needed some type of treatmentment that his worthless insurance policy didn’t cover.  The litany seemed endless.

So how do you respond to this type of emotional toxic dump?  You may have a different opinion, but it seemed pretty clear to me at the time:  don’t respond at all.

I mean, seriously, what could I tell this guy?  “Just divorce that f*ckin’ hag and get on with your life, already!  Look at me—never married, never been married, never thought about getting’ married.  Got no kids—or at least none that I know of.  And I’m living the life of Riley.  Sure, I’ve got no television set or cable.  So if you was to quiz me on the latest episode of Jersey Shore or Duck Dynasty or whatever, chances are I’d fail miserably, but I regard that as an acceptable price to pay.  You tell me which of us has the better life?”

No, clearly that would not do.  For one thing, it would be just too brutal, even if every word of it is true.  You just don’t kick a guy when he’s down, just that simple. 

Plus, I know this guy well enough.  He wouldn’t have responded with anything remotely like, “Yeah, Liam, you’ve got me on this one.  Boy, did I really f*ck up when I married Trudy.”  No, he would have said something more along the lines of:  “Liam, you’re just not getting the whole picture here.  No offense or anything, but you’re as ugly as sin.  You’ve got the complexion of an olive loaf and the hairline of something that’s been left in the ‘fridge too long.  There was never any chance of you getting married in the first place.  You’ll never know the miracle of birth, the wonder of watching your kid’s first steps and whatnot.  Not to be cruel about it, but there’s a whole dimension to life that you only begin to discover when you become a father.  No offense.”

Such views reveal, unintentionally yet very convincingly, the architecture of the conservative’s plan to control society:  control it by sentimentalizing the very means of oppression.  If my friend was inhibited from effectively challenging the immorality inherent in contemporary capitalism by his family’s incessant demands upon his time and resources, he was absolutely precluded from even questioning it by the delusion that the bars of his prison cell as wonderful gilded doors.

Throughout history, all the greatest thinkers have been terrible husbands and parents:   Karl Marx, Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire.  And really, when you get down to it, Jesus may have been able to walk on water, but not even he could have achieved anything noteworthy if he’d listened to his Jewish mother and settled down and gotten a law degree like she’d insisted.  Family life is the yoke of mediocrity.

It scares the living bejeebers out of conservatives that their most effective means of surveillance and control might be prized from their filthy paws.  If legitimization of personal relationships is not monopolized by a centralized hierarchy and enforced by arbitrary violence, what is to prevent people from seeking their own happiness?

For the vast majority of its history, the Church hasn’t given two sh*ts about marriage except as a means of political control. 

Oh, occasionally they illegitimated the offspring of some royal union on the grounds of consanguinity during the Middle Ages.  But that was only enforced against rulers the Pope didn’t like.  Jeez, look at the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs.  Theirs was more like a family shrub than a tree.  Tons of first cousin marriages and more than one uncle/niece marriage, to the point where the dynasty collapsed upon itself in a fetid soup of incest with Carlos II, “El Hechizado” (i.e., “the Cursed”).  All tolerated because of their uncritical endorsement of the papacy.

But the relationship between the spouses themselves wasn’t even considered important enough to merit an official sacrament until the Protestant Reformation gave the Church a reason to claim a monopoly on all marriages.  Clear through the early 1500’s we have literally tens of thousands of examples of courts upholding as legitimate and perfectly legal the informal union of individuals who did nothing more than privately declare themselves to be married—without so much as the presence of a third party witness.  This type of off-the-books yet fully recognized transaction is at the core of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliette”, and is notably celebrated in the marriage of young Margery Paston and Richard Calle of the “Paston Letters” fame.

Back then, that sort of do-as-you-like behavior could be tolerated for the lower orders of society, when autocracy was the only political endorsed by ‘right thinking people’ everywhere.  No point in spending a lot of time actively policing people whose opinions could not, even theoretically, matter.

That all changed with the advent Martin Luther.  The inescapable implication was that, in theory, if not in actual practice, that every man and woman had a right to interpret the world as he or she sought fit—despite the zealous efforts of Luther himself to convince peasants that a Protestant peasant was still just a peasant.

Until the late 19^th century, peasants had far too much to do to ensure their own mere physical survival, much less develop elaborate ideals about proper social and political relationships.  There was still little political need to officially proclaim a monopoly on all human relationships.

But what do you do in a world of plenty?  When technology has increased human productivity several hundred times over and yet minimum required caloric intake remains just the same as it ever was?  How do you justify an arbitrary authority when systems are so diverse and interdependent that no one person or institution could ever hope to control the economy’s physical choke points?  Even if they are inclined to apply a brutal physical violence, conservatives become like sharks, doomed to circle their prey, endlessly and sleeplessly, inevitably to fatigue themselves with their own greed.  Even sharks must die.  Much better to convince the serfs to police themselves.

This, when you think of it, on a planet as horribly overpopulated as our own, is the most compelling social function of child bearing.  Without the cutesy factor of kids, with their aura of charming innocence and all-consuming dependency, how long would most of us put up with the ceaseless and irrational demands of marriage?  What, maybe five percent, tops?

What kind of decent state-subsidized Ponzi scheme or illegal military adventure could a nation sustain if a mere five percent of your population were too preoccupied to resist?  If the shabby ideological framework of neoliberal capitalism chains us to our economic masters, the ridiculous and totally ahistorical conservative notion of ‘traditional’ marriage and childrearing chains us to our spiritual masters.

Could a 16 Hour Work Week Save Civilization?

The question is:  If Americans wanted to retain compensation and employment gains between 1987 and 2009, how long would the average American be required to work each week?  Answer:  16 Hours.

I was a little reticent to publish this one at first, since it does rather smack of classical Libertarianism (i.e., in the sense of being concerned with "free" time, ergo "liberty"). 

But then I thought, "What the Hell?"  It's only a thought.  If I give the reader access to all the underlying data they could do whatever they wanted with it and make their own decisons.

Would you spend more time at Church?  The average employed American only seems to spend about 45 minutes per week on religious activities.  Imagine how many more God points you could rack up if you had another 23 to play with?

Would you take courses in civics or constitutional history?  Again, the current weekly average spent on education is only 38 minutes, supposedly.  You could probably get a doctorate in the subject in a couple of years.

Then again, maybe that's not your bag.  Maybe you're a non-sectarian family type.  If so, you're only spending a little more than 4 hours per week on year nearest and dearest.  Aren't they worth at least 10?  The numbers suggest you can easily spare them--if you're willing to plan properly.

What's YOUR personal priority?

Part I: Thank You for Your Lovely Cards . . .

I'd like to start out by sincerely thanking all those friends and readers who sent cards, flowers, etc. and generally wished me a speedy convalescence from the recent unpleasantness.  The doctors advise me that I'm likely to regain complete functionality in both wrists within the next year, and I'm certain that it was your warm encouragements that are responsible for this unusually speedy recovery.  It's really touching to know that I'm never far from my readers' minds, despite my long absence from the blog.

Unfortunately, I'm not entirely at liberty to discuss the precise chain of events that lead to my hospitalization.  There are certain pending legal matters to be resolved, and I've been counseled against any discussions which may prejudice their outcome.  Nevertheless, the kind interest you've displayed in my welfare and the provocative nature of the photographs appearing in the "Police Beat" column of the local Blattsburg Tattler do call for some exposition of the matter, which I will now attempt--within the limits of prudence, of course.

I've often been told, "Don't drive angry!"  Which is generally good advice, but is much more difficult in practice than it's simplistic rhetorical formulation would suggest.  I live in an isolated portion of rural Wisconsin, where it is frankly impossible to do so much as pick up the morning paper from the mail box without driving five miles from the house.  I attribute my near constant rage to living in rural Wisconsin as well.  The people here are almost without exception intolerable bigoted hicks and hayseeds.  The few locally available alternatives are not much more soothing.

"Wow.  This stuff you've written here is real sh*t, Liam.  I mean, this isn't worthy of publication on a bathroom wall."

Raj is one of the very few non-honkies resident in my small town, and his Indian-born globe trotting urbanity is generally a welcome relief from the otherwise unrelenting provinciality of the place.  He'd actually grown up in Berlin, London and Paris--cultural and literary capitals whose names I was still learning to spell when I met him at night school, a creative writing class at the regional technical college.  He'd gotten his B.A. at a big name liberal arts school on the West Coast with a serious reputation and lengthy roll call of seriously elite professors, so his opinion does bear some attention.

"Okay, Raj.  But I think you're being a little hyperbolic there, chief.  After all, it is a first draft.  And you're completely glossing over its elegant narrative exploration of the proletariat's complicity in his own alienation.  Give this thing its due."

"Give this thing its due?!  It's garbage!  Absolute, uninspired formulaic garbage! Trey Parker regularly craps out better episodes of South Park while tripping on acid than the drek you've wiped all over these pages!"

"Heyheyhey!  Let's keep this discussion productive, okay?  I can handle criticism if there's a point behind it.  Care to unbundle that landfill of a critique there and point out a single, specific instance of this so-called irredeemable "drek"?"

"Well well well . . . Where to begin?"  Raj rifled through the jam-and-butter stained manuscript, violently stabbing his thumb towards the offending page once he'd settled on one example.  "How about this?  The scene where you have Karl Marx coming home early to find his wife Jenny in bed with the economist Adam Smith.  What is this supposed to be?  An episode of "Falcon Crest" or "Rocky and Bullwinkle"?"

I really was NOT understanding Raj's point of view on this one at all.  OF COURSE it was a ridiculously melodramatic parody.  That was the intention all along.  The entire concept here was meta commentary on the "Snidely Whiplash"-esque quality behind the phony Left/Right culture wars.  Did Raj really think I'd write in a goofy todtenkampf between Adam Smith and Karl Marx on the rooftops of Victorian London without any satirical plan?  I took a deep breath and did my best to dial back my own building rage.  I started to explain as slowly and calmly as I could.

"Raj, you're missing the entire point here.  The point is exactly that--to ridicule the cartoonishly simplistic terms of the public debate.  Is that really not apparent to you?"

"Liam, how can I say this?  How can I adequately convey to you the tired, "been-there-done-that" quality of this unimaginative rubric without implying that you're a hopeless philistine? . . . Oh, that's right--I CAN'T."

I probably would have been able to endure his jealous, fairly hack-like sniping had it not been for the eruption of a snorting cackle of laughter from the horse-like co-ed sitting a few yards from us in the cafeteria.  It's one thing to receive a vigorous challenge from a reasonably informed person, but it's quite another to be subject to the abuse of the bovine cretins that haunted the halls of this technical college.  I exploded out of my chair in a fury, ripping the manuscript from Raj's hands and swinging my way about toward the exit in a near blind rage.

Which probably explains why I slammed headfirst into a pillar on the way out, showering the manuscript and the contents of my computer bag all over the floor.  Now the whole cafeteria roared with laughter.

So this is more or less where my head was just before the accident, and why it seemed like a good idea at the time to get away and just clear my head for a bit with a quiet drive through the winding country lanes.  If anyone had come up to me at that moment and insisted on that tired old aphorism, "Don't drive angry!", I probably would have head-butted them and told them to mind their own business.

But again, that was before the accident.  Before I'd encountered Abbey Small and the Buddhist Mafia.  Before everything spiralled out of control.

Weaktard: The Obnoxious Word That Explains American Politics

Weaktard:  Noun and adjective, a portmanteau of 'weak' and 'retarded', a puerile term of contempt for an opponent

A couple of months back a good friend of mine gave me copies of the great books "Albion's Seed:  Four British Folkways in America" by David Fischer and "Born Fighting:  How the Scots-Irish Shaped America" by Jim Webb.  My pal is of proud Ulster Scots descent--but much more importantly, very active in trade unionism and local politics.  For nearly 20 years now my friend has been one of the core on-ground volunteer campaign workers for a line of great local and state candidates, like Senator Bob Wirch, who exemplify the best in Wisconsin's heritage of progressive politics.  Yes, those books do explore his ancestors' experience[1], but their real importance is explaining the social dynamics that win American elections in the 2010's--and offer us a jumping off point to think about alternate paths that American society might evolve into.

Contemporary Americans[2] have a shocking amount in common with those Ulster Scots who came to America in the 1700's:  they are both the products of broken societies.

Historical Populism, Dispopulism and Mispopulism
As described by Fischer and Webb, the border country between England and Scotland, whence the majority of these families originated before migration to Ireland and thence to the United States, was just short of being a lawless no-man's land.  The writ of neither crown had been particularly effective here, and folkways that were both staunchly un-ideological and un-sentimentally brutal flourished here.  In the absence of a reliable government, a man's surest remedy would be the strength of his own arm--and the loyalty of his kin.

This particular brand of populism diverged from its British and Irish counterparts considerably upon introduction of a very different sytem of class relationships in America.  The scope for individual ambitions provided by the vast American hinterland of the 18th century seemed endless.  No longer were tenant farmers locked, without even theoretical recourse, into abusive rack-renting relationships with tituladoes whose only claim to their land lay in crown grants arising from military conquest.  Military campaigns which the poor fought but which the aristocrats profited from.  Even if very imperfectly realized[3], the theoretical possibility of homesteading his own family farm was open to any willing lad, regardless of his origins.  This seems to have effectively dissolved the traditional antagonism between the rural poor and landed gentry, to the point where many were more than happy to embrace secession and Civil War on behalf of a slave holding elite whose interests were starkly at variance with their own.[4]  Those Ulster Scots in America still demanded shows of raw agression from their political leaders[5], but now they lost whatever progressive moral valence they originally had in Ireland.

Contemporary Echos
Sound familiar?  It should.  This minimalist, personal rather than institutional approach to governance is exactly what an idle elite devoted to preying on their fellow Americans have been praying to Moloch for:  a clear field, a total lack of effective opposition.  Apart from the disasterous and partially quantifiable effects failing to regulate and tax the wealthy and their corporate proxies, it articulates and magnifies a fundamentally anti-Christian, anti-social philosophy of hatred of self and others that alienates America from the rest of the world today.  It has rendered Wisconsin a black pit of corruption.

In this environment, where the electoral success necessary to provide meaningful opposition to Evil requires an ability to exhibit almost vicious aggression, all the national Democratic Party has been able to offer of late has been a tired, washed-up whore named Barack Obama.  Yes, there are proud exceptions on the state and local levels--and my pal's trade unionism and political work is a part of that.  But on the national level, where almost all key policies must be enforced, due to constitutional provisions such as the Commerce Clause?  Not so much.

The Way Forward Under Taboo
My conceptualization of this is still very much "in progress".  What's needed is an uncomprimising display of integrity and vigor by a candidate willing to do or die by actual populist ideas, not just some phony re-tread bullshit a la hedge fund millionaire like Mitt Romney or weaktard traitors like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.  But this much I do know:  It cannot be presented as an ideological platform.

Modern Americans, despite the variety of their religious or ethnic backgrounds share with those first Ulster Scots immigrants a rabid fear of imposed credos.  They may well demonstrate a shocking lack of respect for others' beliefs and traditions, but Hell if they're going to submit to anyone else's.  Even if they're not particularly political or religious themselves, they have an incredible paranoia about the efforts or imagined efforts of anyone else to proselytise them.  This is why Obama, despite actively supporting or caving into every one of the Republican Party's demands can still be "credibly" labelled a socialist among America's unsophisticated and unideological electorate:  he keeps talkin' in abstract, bullshit language like "hope" and "comprimise" among nations.  That's "ivory tower, faggit-talk".

If and when the "Left" identify an electorally viable rhetorical framework, I don't know.  Still working on it.  Could have a lot in common with the reinterpretation of history like the one that worked so well to harness the progressive energies of the Irish Land Reform movement and Scottish enlightenment into the 19th century trade union movement.[6]  One thing's for damned sure, though:  worthless wastes of bumwhipe like Obama have to go.


Footnotes
[1]  I don't want to digress too far into my friend's pedigree, but it's a fascinating example of the many divergent threads of historical continuity and the way their distinctive individual character can seem to be temporarily submerged by those of their more dominant neighbors only later rise to the surface and assume more prominent leadership.  While the remainder of this post will focus primarily on the ideology-free character of early Scots-Irish politics and its current legacy in the U.S.A., it's worth noting that my friend's family left Ireland in the mid-1790's--just prior to the 1798 Rebellion.  In fact, reproductions of the diary of his original emigrant ancestor discuss at several points their connection to a Reverend James McKinney--a man praised for his courageous Irish patriotism in these terms by James Seaton Reid in the book "A History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland":

"His ministry terminated abruptly in 1793, for, preaching to a large open-air meeting at Ballinaloub, he took as his text, Ezek. XXI., 27 : "I will overturn, overturn, overturn it," and delivered " an inflammatory discourse," implying the threat of the overturning of the British Government.

Preachers sometimes complain that their sermons fall on listless ears, but it was not so with Mr. McKinney. Some of the loyalists among his audience reported his expressions; and he found it convenient to betake himself hastily to America, and there became a very distinguished minister at Rocky Creek, S.C., and died 16th September, 1802. A ballad composed in his honour by a local poet is now lost to history, save a few lines, one of which concluded each verse, declaring that:  '. . . At Ballinaloub he played the man.'"

Elsewhere Rev. McKinney is mentioned as a "Houstonite"--a supporter of the radically populist, anti-authoritarian views of Reverend David Houston.  To my knowledge, this never became a formal faction, but it does seem a clear precursor to the progressive "New Light" movement within the Presbyterian church.

The seemingly endless vistas for expansion into the 18th century American wilderness resulted in a greatly reduced level of friction between the elites and common settler folk as compared to the relatively narrow confines of the north of Ireland.  An ironic result was that the influence of progressive movements lasted somewhat longer in Ireland than in the nascent United States.  In Ireland, New Light Presbyterianism was more or less destroyed in the early 1800's, by internal schism, and to some extent British persecution for their involvement in resistance actions like the 1798 Rebellion.  Until then, New Light Presbyterianism had served an interesting political role in mobilizing the peasantry against the confessional descrimination and abusive rack-renting practices of established church elites.

The social utility of their progressive doctrines being less, their influence gradually faded, and I think my friend was entirely unaware of the heroic role his ancestors had played in the history of Irish nationalism and progressive politics.

[2]  Again, I don't want to go overboard with the digressions in the body of the post, but I think some explanation may be called for given my distinctive moniker.  My ancestors came from the very same county as my pal's--but obviously of the RC rather than Presbyterian persuasion.  Which is kind of interesting, because persons of BOTH persuasions can be found with the McGonagle name or variants thereof who cannot remember a time when their ancestors subscribed to a confession different than their own.

The reason I've chosen to explore in this post the specifically protestant Irish experience in America rather than the experience of my own ancestors is manifold:

1.  Historians typically date the earliest significant influx of Roman Catholic Irish into America at more than 100 years after the migration of their protestant neighbors, and therefore the protestant experience can be more clearly linked to the events of the American revolutionary period.

2.  Although the Roman Catholic church in the U.S. is by far the largest single denomination (I think like 22%), far more Americans subscribe to one or another of the protestant churches (maybe like 53%).

3.  Catholics of Irish descent are only a small minority of total American Catholics--maybe like 20% at most.

4.  Even the Irish brand of Catholicism as practiced in the United States is significantly different than that brand practiced back in Ireland.  I guess I can speak only from personal experience here, but the differences seem ENORMOUS to me. 

I think roughly 95% American Irish Catholics are so thoroughly American that they do not even recognize the deep, deep psychological centrality of the Christian story of Jesus' persecution, death and resurrection to Ireland's conception of itself as a nation, and the political rallying point the RC church represented during times of persecution by an alien aristocracy.  The outlook and behavior of Irish Americans is much more like their non-Irish and non-Catholic neighbors than their Irish cousins.

Maybe another 2.5% are radical conservatives in the Opus Dei / Mel Gibson tradition who regard anything short of the Latin Mass as heresy, and another 2.5% are interested in cultivating a deeper understanding of Irish church history, but don't feel particularly well served by the hierarchy.

Anyhow, while all that stuff is massively interesting, and some of it may be useful to provide context for my post here, I decline to elaborate further now.  Though I do have some vague plans to use the Irish RC experience as a starting point for another post about theoretical pathways that progressive movements can branch into the future:  "Everything Old Is New Again:  Is It Time for A Re-Think on Brehon Law?"

[3]  From page 751, section entitled "Backcountry Wealth Ways:  Border Ideas of the Material Order", of Albion's Seed:

"Throughout this great region where virgin land existed in abundance, most men were landless.  At the same time, a few families owned very large tracts. . . . By the last decade of the eighteenth century . . . . (t)he top decile of wealthholders owned between 40 and 80 percent of the land.  In many areas, one-third to one-half of taxable white males owned nothing. . . . "

[4]  And I don't think I have to remind many of my American readers that this self-loathing romance for an abusive past continues to this day.  But it may shock some of my overseas friends.  Crypto-Klan phenomena like the book "Bell Curve:  Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life" have tarted up in psuedo-scientific clothing the all the essentials of the old slave "morality" to the point where it was openly embraced by Tea Party douchebags like Wisconsin's own loathsome lout, Ron Johnson.

[5] I will not catalogue here the litany of voter intimidation and ballot-stuffing offenses that provide ample illustration of this aspect of historic American political culture, the books do a great job of that themselves.  And until you get a chance to read those books, I'd say viewing the film "Gangs of New York" does a fair job of rendering an approximate subjective equivalent.  It's about NY, obviously, and RC Irish experience rather than those specifically of Ulster Scots on the American frontier, but they have a lot in common in this regard.

[6] Like I said, I'm still working on it.  But in the meantime, you might enjoy a relevant episode from the awesome Scottish history series presented by Neil Oliver.