If I hadn't it wouldn't have taken me so long to figure out what must count as about the most enduring and valid of all the commandments in the Bible, as repeated by Jesus "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," was the key to everything necessary in producing a decent life under self-government by people of good will.
I had been remembering the ridiculously late "ah-ha" moment in thinking about my theme of what the traditional American liberal-left needed to do to regain power and to create such a decent life under such a regime of self-government when I realized that the first and final guarantee of it, even among such of us who are not of reliably good will was EQUALITY. I think I first articulated that in a post I wrote for Echidne of the Snakes, though I can't locate that specific piece. I believe I said, explicitly that above any assertion of "freedom" that equality was the first rule for making and judging decisions, laws, legal decisions without which freedom would become unequal and dangerous. I think informing that conclusion was memories of the proto-fascist William F. Buckley jr. slamming equality as the enemy of "liberty".
In looking up that first time I said that at Echidne's and my original blog "olvlzl" I came across this piece that I had forgotten writing and which I like enough so I'm reposting it. I used to take a lot more time on my posts back then. Maybe I should go back to doing that and cutting down on the number of things I post. As I recall, it was controversial (probably at Duncan's) because people figured I was slamming two lesbians when I wasn't, I was slamming two privileged, elite Republican hypocrites, their families and the editorial writers of the Boston Globe.
It also fits in with this mornings post about how the enhanced "liberties" "freedoms" divorced from equality and the moral framing as is found in religion turns, almost inevitably, into the enhancement of liberties taken by those who already have more power and money. There is no more oppressive messaging and instruction for women, for children, for men without money and power than the iconic symbol of total liberty, the porn industry.
If all men followed that teaching that Jesus repeated from the Mosaic Law, no woman or child or poor man would ever be exploited and treated the way they are because no man would ever willingly be treated that way, himself. Slavery would be non-existent, wage slavery and poverty included. I don't remember which Roman emperor it was who remarked with surprise that the kind of destitution (and, certainly the many consequences of destitution) that was ubiquitous in the pagan world was absent among the Jews. The routine practice of infanticide, which fell most heavily on infant girls, was, as well, absent among the Jews and the later Jewish-Christians.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Sorry About The Cheney-Poe Baby, How Do You Feel About The Other Children?
The Boston Globe printed an editorial on Wednesday calling for the privacy of Mary Cheney and Heather Poe as they become the parents of a baby. The editorial praises Dick Cheney for not being a Republican morality policeman on the issue of gay rights while attributing this lone spec of light to his having to deal with his daughter’s sexuality.
Sorry, Boston Globe but wrong, wrong, wrong on all counts. Mary Cheney campaigned to put the Republican party in power, the party that has been using hatred of lesbians and gay men as one of the pillars of its frighteningly effective electoral strategy. The Republican Party, with the Log Cabin dupes, is the home of hatred, the epicenter of the attack on all of us who go into the category.
Mary Cheney and Heather Poe gave up any right to privacy on this issue for themselves when they supported putting people in power who were dedicated to taking the same rights away from the rest of us.
It is one of the favorite gambits of wealthy, powerful conservatives to carve out these zones of personal privilege for themselves, even islands of alleged enlightenment as they support those who turn out the lights and break down the doors for those without power and protection. That tactic of “moderate” Republicanism is over. With the defeat of Lincoln Chaffee it is so over. If they don’t like where it leaves them, well isn’t that just too bad. The rest of us are even more inconvenienced by the hate campaign that the stinking Republican Party has waged against us. You don’t like it, Lincoln, Mary, Heather, choose sides but don’t expect us to make any concessions to your other loyalties. If your families and party weren’t using the politics of hate to begin with we wouldn’t even be talking about them.
As for Dick and Lynne Cheney, two bigger hypocrites are seldom to be seen in one marriage. Going so far as publishing, one expects perhaps even profiting from, very badly written lesbian sex scenes while campaigning for the party of gay baiting, campaigning for “traditional morality” against just such sex scenes and while insisting that out of all possible targets of their parties and their own hatred that their child have a place of safety? They are the poster couple of Republican-fascist degeneracy, “The Damned - America 2000 ".
The well positioned in the media, in academia, in the law talk about a lot of different, valued rights. Freedom, privacy, free speech, etc. But they don’t seem to be very much interested in that one value that gives everyone an ironclad incentive to not violate the most cherished rights of other people. EQUALITY, the absolute and firm requirement in the law and in society that rights and liberties that one person or one group is allowed to exercise are exactly the same for every single other person. Equal rights, equal exercise of rights goes to everyone or no one gets to exercise them. Mary and Heather don’t deserve privacy when they, their parents, their party actively violate the privacy of numerous other people and not just gay people and lesbians. They don’t get to promote bigotry while enjoying a sort of social Ziebart to protect themselves.
If you ask what about their child when it is born, what about it's rights and feelings? Well lots of other lesbians and gay men have children. What about them?
The Boston Globe printed an editorial on Wednesday calling for the privacy of Mary Cheney and Heather Poe as they become the parents of a baby. The editorial praises Dick Cheney for not being a Republican morality policeman on the issue of gay rights while attributing this lone spec of light to his having to deal with his daughter’s sexuality.
Sorry, Boston Globe but wrong, wrong, wrong on all counts. Mary Cheney campaigned to put the Republican party in power, the party that has been using hatred of lesbians and gay men as one of the pillars of its frighteningly effective electoral strategy. The Republican Party, with the Log Cabin dupes, is the home of hatred, the epicenter of the attack on all of us who go into the category.
Mary Cheney and Heather Poe gave up any right to privacy on this issue for themselves when they supported putting people in power who were dedicated to taking the same rights away from the rest of us.
It is one of the favorite gambits of wealthy, powerful conservatives to carve out these zones of personal privilege for themselves, even islands of alleged enlightenment as they support those who turn out the lights and break down the doors for those without power and protection. That tactic of “moderate” Republicanism is over. With the defeat of Lincoln Chaffee it is so over. If they don’t like where it leaves them, well isn’t that just too bad. The rest of us are even more inconvenienced by the hate campaign that the stinking Republican Party has waged against us. You don’t like it, Lincoln, Mary, Heather, choose sides but don’t expect us to make any concessions to your other loyalties. If your families and party weren’t using the politics of hate to begin with we wouldn’t even be talking about them.
As for Dick and Lynne Cheney, two bigger hypocrites are seldom to be seen in one marriage. Going so far as publishing, one expects perhaps even profiting from, very badly written lesbian sex scenes while campaigning for the party of gay baiting, campaigning for “traditional morality” against just such sex scenes and while insisting that out of all possible targets of their parties and their own hatred that their child have a place of safety? They are the poster couple of Republican-fascist degeneracy, “The Damned - America 2000 ".
The well positioned in the media, in academia, in the law talk about a lot of different, valued rights. Freedom, privacy, free speech, etc. But they don’t seem to be very much interested in that one value that gives everyone an ironclad incentive to not violate the most cherished rights of other people. EQUALITY, the absolute and firm requirement in the law and in society that rights and liberties that one person or one group is allowed to exercise are exactly the same for every single other person. Equal rights, equal exercise of rights goes to everyone or no one gets to exercise them. Mary and Heather don’t deserve privacy when they, their parents, their party actively violate the privacy of numerous other people and not just gay people and lesbians. They don’t get to promote bigotry while enjoying a sort of social Ziebart to protect themselves.
If you ask what about their child when it is born, what about it's rights and feelings? Well lots of other lesbians and gay men have children. What about them?
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