Hate Mail File Why I Dissed Who I Dissed

I remember, back in the long lost days when feminism was really feminism and one of its major issues was opposing the reduction of women into objects to display, consume and use, that I came to the realization that that was, in fact, the basic moral problem that distinguished liberalism from the capitalist right.   I remember reading feminists on the topic and, now that I think about it, I think their analyses had a lot to do with how I avoided a lot of the dangerous practices, depraved thinking and, quite likely HIV in the coming years.   There were things I wouldn't agree to do based on a rejection of seeing myself and other men as objects without regard to our welfare and good and I think that isn't unrelated to what the now derided "second-wave" feminists pointed out to me.   I will always be grateful to the women who held out for women being more than objects.

The issue of whether or not people are objects or are embodied souls or are in some way more than mere, ephemeral, negligible physical units, important, if at all, taken in mass as a quantum of naturalistic force is, in fact, still central to the success or failure of the left and I am ever more convinced that is demonstrated by the failure of the materialist left.   I am impressed with how The People, derided angrily as ignorant fools and dupes of the capitalists, never the less, got that right.  The total and absolute failure of the Communists in elections here is a practical demonstration of vox populi vox dei in action.   The anger of leftists and even some putative liberals at that rejection is rather irrational, or what don't they get about electoral democracy and the requirement of abiding by the decision of The People.

I think there is no accident that it was, largely, materialists who championed pornography and prostitution.   And I don't think there is any accident that it was, among other things, presented within an attack against the majority religious view of morality exactly in regard to the question of whether or not people were physical objects for display, consumption and use.  I also don't think the feminists of the 1960s and 70s were wrong in which side they took in that struggle.  For that brief period, the choice taken was absolutely consistent with the view of women as the possessors of inherent, intrinsic, inalienable rights and the absolute moral obligation that they be treated as such.

There is an impossible to breach contradiction between the view of people as objects and people as spiritual beings.  It is the inevitable difference between considering people as objects available for commercial use and the legal and moral view of people who are the inevitable possessors of rights which must be observed and moral obligations to observe those rights.   I think the decision of many feminists who were presented with the choice that is forced by that inevitable conflict to come down for the pro-porn, pro-prostitution side is evidence that when someone chooses materialism that will, inevitably win out over any other consideration.

Materialism is a monist system, it can't allow for any other possibilities, it will dominate and, when the exigencies of rights are pushed to their limits, it will destroy rights.  I don't think it is any accident that the officially Marxist countries were the champion violators of human rights, rivaled only by the capitalist right where they dominated.