Of the many things that are apparent in the present debate over transgenderism and its implications, I find two things recurring here that occurred previously in the marriage debate. Firstly, the proponents of marriage redefinition invoked a rhetoric of ‘exclusion’ by default; and thus the issue from the outset was one couched in terms of marriage ‘equality’ rather than whether redefining marriage was justified given what the ends of marriage were, how these were reflected in the definition itself, and how this could be accommodated, if at all, in the interests of those in same-sex relationships. Secondly, if the debate ever moved past the spurious notion of ‘marriage equality’, the definition was criticized in ways that we now find being directed at the definition of sex/ gender.
Regarding the rhetoric of ‘exclusion’, we see presently the claim that all that ‘trans-men or -women’ want is ‘equality’ with women or men, respectively; where this is understood as the license to self-ID as the other sex, recognized and acknowledged as now a member of that class, and thereby enjoy the rights and privileges of that class, whether it involves entering their spaces, participating in their competitions, festivals, or the like. The use of this rhetoric is powerful in a democracy because the public reflexively feels that exclusion per se is bad whatever the justification of the exclusion itself.
As to the second, if the debate ever gets to an exploration of what male or female is, and we’ve seen prominent people either evade answering the question allegedly for ‘lack of preparation’, or claim, self-defeatingly, that man or woman is whatever a person identifies without ever specifying what man or woman is, or how they came to know it.
These same patterns also appeared in the marriage redefinition debate. Firstly, the plaintive cry among marriage redefinitionists was about a rhetoric of ‘exclusion’; all they wanted, we were told, was to be included in the institution of marriage and that not including relationships between the same sex was ‘exclusionary’, ‘discriminatory’, and so on.
Secondly, when the debate happened to turn to what marriage is and they were confronted with the definition that marriage as a union of the sexes, orientated towards the generation, custody and education of children, and the good of the spouses, we were bombarded with replies such as, then how can infertile men or women get married, or what of marriages that don’t bear children for whatever reason, and so on. Debates on the old Cat almost always raised such objections. On this argument, the counter to the definition of woman below,
will be that it excludes post-menopausal or infertile women or women that suffer from some other relevant condition. This, of course, will entirely rely on the proponent of sex redefinition ignoring what is here meant by ‘typical’ (the ‘general case’) as applying to the class ‘female’, not to every individual instance which occasionally fails to fulfill those capacities or that it includes a power that can be lost through aging, or due to infirmity, or the like. Here is a particularly egregious example cloaked in scientistic verbiage:
The same is true of marriage, the definition applies to the general case, not to every particular case, nor must it; namely, that the typical union of a typical man and woman will generate children, and so on, since the power of generating and caring for children applies to, again, the general case.
But how is this connected to Liberalism, I hear you ask? Well, because this pattern of debate is inherit in Liberalism itself. With respect to the first, this is an outcome of liberalism’s voluntarism which is suspicious of all inherited norms and distinctions, whether they are natural or social, because they are beyond the scope of, or limit, our autonomy . Sex, like family, nationality, and religion, is to the liberal, simply another imposition upon our autonomy as persons. Transgenderists, and their liberal allies, oppose the limitation of nature that sex imposes upon them as persons to create and re-create themselves. So when they see women behaving as women and they notice there are impediments to men behaving as women in women-only spaces, activities , etc. they view this as inequality and they bamboozle the public by speaking in terms of exclusion and fairness and claiming that ‘all they want to do is live their lives’.
With respect to the second point, this is an outcome of liberalism’s nominalist metaphysical background; namely, the rejection of universals in favour of particulars, which meant that the labels (marriage, man/woman) are only names that lack any referent in reality. Weaver’s Ideas have Consequences is a great introduction to the argument. It’s the common thread that can be found in many debates in which liberals involve themselves and their responses to their opponents, whether its abortion, euthanasia, marriage redefinition, sex/ gender, and so on. The first step in resisting these patterns apart from noticing them to begin with is recognizing their source/s.
Enjoyed the article. There is one step further to explain, and that is explaining the driving force behind trans wanting to go into schools/libraries etc. to proselytize to little children? In the context it would suggest that they need to convert children to also become trannies, in order to feel like real women giving birth to (creating) children in their own likeness. But this could also be seen as narcistic behavior, i.e. the desire to perform, get attention and especially using far-out dress-ups to entertain the kids. Either way it’s not particularly healthy for the kids’ psychology and is a disruption they could do without.
Framing of these kind of proposals benefits massively from how much easier it is to propose apparent increases freedom “to” vs maintaining freedoms “against” or “from”.
For example we might prefer that marriage as an institution be free from collusive pressures to change for minority groups or that our children stay free from influencing by special sub-groups outside the norms of society. These freedoms “from” do not resonate and cannot even be understood by many who easily welcome new freedoms “to” have marriage equality or ability to push lifestyles onto others.
Solution to this kind of shallow, brain-dead framing is to react with similar framing that works at the same level e.g. the “In-Voice” or “Labors Aboriginal Upper House”.
How do collectivists counter the phenomenon of Dolezalism?
Why can’t I, as one of the whitest people on the planet, suddenly start identifying as a Proud Garbageari Man or for that matter, a Swahili Chieftain?
Racists!
OK – apart from the fact that it would be self evidently ridiculous. But how is it any different from the Pascoe, or some six foot three swarthy wally with a todger suddenly putting on some lippy, a wig and a dress and claiming they’re a woman?
Mem, I definitely think both proselytising and narcissism is involved. I think it also involves normalising their attitude/ behaviour as well as seeking recognition/ acceptance.
They can’t Rabz. If A as a woman can self-ID as a man then what in-principle objection could there be for A, a white woman self-IDing as an indigenous woman? Can’t think of one.
This inevitably happens when discussion of freedoms is divorced from their ground in the good. Academic freedom is ordered towards the truth. Freedom of assembly is ordered to communal life. Right to marry is ordered towards the good of the family. But when you scrub any mention of the object of these rights the entire discussion becomes unmoored.
Exactly, Dover. Freedom in the abstract has few opponents. Freedom in particular scenarios like the ones above – not so much.
We see this in the Labor Voice proposal where its proponents describe it in vague terms and it seems to be an additional “good thing” we’d surely accept just because we like to expand freedoms at any opportunity.
As the Libs of Tik Tok video says: “Imagine going into thousands of dollars of debt to study this”.
Blind Freddie could tell you transgenderism is a scam being run by cashed-up, power-hungry male homosexuals who can’t believe how easy it was to fool the good-natured people of Australia and the West into undermining one of the central institutions of their civilisation, marriage between men and women whose major purpose is to guarantee the their future by bringing children into the world.
People are so stupid, the poofter activists whispered behind their hands; we wonder if we could trick them into giving us sexual access to children – one of major secondary objectives of the gay “marriage” movement.
And so, hard on the heels of the 2017 gay “marriage” revolution, the trans movement was born, tearing down the sexual privacy of women and children and attempting to destroy female sports by making male cheats eligible to compete with the physically weaker sex.
As far as the poofter activists were concerned, what could go wrong when 99% of journalists – still clinging to the fantasy that the public trusts them – were totally on board with the destruction of civilisation’s basic rules? It would be a walkover, the activists figured, because the normies are too stupid to think for themselves.
The only positive to have come out of the past two years, in my opinion, is that most people now realise the vast majority of journalists are radical, duplicitous, bottom-feeding scum who don’t think or vote like them, couldn’t give a stuff about what the public wants and support extremist social forces like the trans movement designed to change this country forever.
Most of all, the radical poofters, like the rest of the left, are obsessed with political power, think everything is political 24/7 and the normies figuratively should be forced to suck their dicks.
I don’t think Australia is ready to become a radical, Marxist nation controlled by homosexuals – the left’s current obsession.
Australia is the laziest nation on earth so it’s vulnerable to the Marxist onslaught, which promises to maintain our living standard while crippling our economic output with a hippie fantasy electricity network that would have trouble sustaining a small Third World African country.
I think don’t Australians trust the Marxist Labor utopians who currently run the country. The problem is that the party set up to support Australian aspiration, the Liberals, is full of Marxist utopian fellow travellers who don’t believe in freedom and effectively support Labor’s plan to enslave us under the socialist yoke.
None of this is true unless you engage in some scurrilous definition changing game stunts to begin with and then it is still full of ridiculous howlers that wouldn’t even make it in a junior high school debating competition. Your family or gender is as much of a constraint as breathing is or being conscious is. If you want to change it, good luck, you’re going to need it.
You can’t even define “liberalism”.
Now here’s the thing.
Dover won’t even say what he believes, only what he doesn’t believe and he isn’t forthcoming in giving an exhaustive list.
Classical liberalism, “libertarianism” etc is/are not the same as American constitutional “liberalism”, i.e. progressivism. Stop trying to sneak turds into the punch bowl, even small ones.
You won’t even admit the American protestant roots of progressivism. It is obvious to anyone who has read up on the roots of it (social gospel).
A link on an academic history paper explaining the social gospel roots of progressivism:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/206106
The Culture of Liberal Protestant Progressivism, 1875-1925
Richard Wightman Fox
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Vol. 23, No. 3, Religion and History (Winter, 1993), pp. 639-660 (22 pages)
Published By: The MIT Press
If you accepted classical liberalism is not the same as progressivism, there would be no debate. You’d rather try to bully and cajole people who should be very close allies into an ideology they don’t really believe and you can’t properly describe and you cannot define either.
As fascinating as medieval scholasticism is (well, I think so), we don’t need to invoke it to solve this dilemma or that it plays the decisive causative role you attribute to it.
I’m not even sure you’re doing justice to nominalism, which had (at least) two schools at odds with each other.
But how can you accept recognition when you are dressed up as a clown or as Marilyn Monroe? You are fake and you dress as a fake. Even if you are accepted it is accepted not as yourself. You know it. You are in a no win situation as a person, walking on a tight rope. It is a sad situation.
or concede that it plays
A saying from the days of the Cold War, when many western leftards would twist themselves in knots to excuse the behaviour of communist governments.
“These people are so open minded that their brains fall out.”
Far too many soft-“liberals” meet that description.
Christianity as a whole fell below 50 per cent for the first time at the 2021 census, and “no religion” rose to a new peak of 38.9 per cent.
So when they see women behaving as women and they notice there are impediments to men behaving as women in women-only spaces, activities , etc. they view this as inequality.
What about women behaving as men, say Women’s Rugby League, AFL, Basketball, competitive Swimming, Cricket.
Why can’t nominal Women be involved in that?
Sure, it might be a bit fruity, but why should I care?
So when they see women behaving as women and they notice there are impediments to men behaving as women in women-only spaces, activities , etc. they view this as inequality
Let’s take Women’s Boxing.
Yeah, it’s stupid, and in a contest a nominal Woman is likely to fracture the skull of a biological woman, but if the BioWoman’s manager allows her to take part in a contest where she’s clearly outmatched and on the way to Emergency, why must I take responsibility?
It’s like a woman in Melbourne who decides that she’s a Tank and Cars don’t exist.
Sooner or later she’s going to get run over.
How would it be if the Cops knock on some rando’s door in Brisbane and tell him that he’s responsible for the skittled Melbourne fantasist because he didn’t care?
plus a dash of Munchausen by proxy from some parents, particularly mothers.
I wasn’t special as a little girl, so I want my progeny to be special.
D-
Poor sentence structure, overly wordy, lacking clarity.
Revise and resubmit.
I posted this yesterday in the Open Thread but it’s even more relevant here.
the inhabited human story
Alamo
Thanks for the post but still to gauge for a simpleton like me.
We need to break down a the langauge to its basics and the philosophy as well.
Few people are able to do this except for people like Pell who provided practical day to day experience of life – these issues were there thousands of years ago and are here now.
Progessivism- to me a word used incorrectly. it applies to science and maths eg the bringing of European civilisation to Australia, the increasing of living age of aboriginals , same with USA.
The Turks invasion of Europe was not progressive nor the Russian Revolution which enforced murder, bad architecture, food, environment, literature, improvement in daily lives.
What we are living through at the moment is to me in a visual form is Cecil B DeMille Filum of Moses. Moses comming down from Mt Sinai with his tablets
To find the Orgie at the base.
Complete social breakdown.
The issues which dominate our teenage minds – we have not left the student union – 18 yr old arts students listening to pop music which is all about sex – we destroy all real progress eg the China Russia railway, GM rice, the Franklin river dam.
The Christian values is the best values as it provides for a peaceful and respectful society where you do unto others as you would do to yourself.
As a result of peaceful behaviour, not aggressive, attention to family, adventure to the world and optimism our societies improved and explored the world. The peoples of Africa, America, Asia had not done this. Japan rules at the time of colonialisation realised they had to learn from there masters.Look what happened to them.
Much of today is you are a poofta if you are marries and have a family and your are a deplorable if you have a real job eg fitter, machinist, mechanic etc.
Look at the idolisation of “charities” “think tanks” – much of their thoughts are immature.
We are removed from reality, sex is bad and we don’t know why water comes out of our taps.
Well observed, mem. An associated point is that it is also ‘normalising’. It suggests that being ‘trans’ is a normal part of the human experience. Move along, nothing to see here, etc.
The essence of being female is expressed by the general of it, as you say Dover, not the particular, and is validated by the ‘good’ of it – the fact that reproduction is a female matter after conception. The ‘good’ of marriage is that it institutionalises this fact of female reproduction into a social pair bond that ensures a ‘good’ outcome for children – their survival as operative sexed individuals with the ability to culturally socialise, provide food and shelter, and reproduce themselves in due course via marriage.
Human society and survival depends on this. To deny that is perverse and heading to dystopia.
There may also be a kind of “specialness” creep involved here. At one time, homosexuals faced the same conundrum…how to be “special” but also considered mainstream. As acceptance grew, the specialness withered. The gay couple next door is now humdrum. Some are even “married”. They adopt or create designer children. And no one turns a hair.
What to do? How do we reinforce our legitimacy as a sexual group while still clamouring for specialness status? The addition of just about every letter of the alphabet was the answer, first as a token, now as a militant movement far outweighing the excesses of gay pride. And this time it goes further, blatantly preaching perverse behaviour to children, something that even old school gays are chary about.
And, on the back of it all we have mad parents, particularly mothers, clamouring for their own kind of “specialness” via their mentally damaged and physically mutilated children. Wild for clicks and views, they parade their lives as a form of soap opera.
This all goes way beyond “acceptance”. It’s lionisation demanded at the point of scalpels and bony painted fingernails.
Everything that is now contributing to the collapse of the West is the end result of nihilistic hedonistic liberalism. The American philosopher, Leo Strauss, saw this. Here is a brief summation of Strauss’ views on liberalism from Wikepedia…
Strauss argued that liberalism in its modern form (which is oriented toward universal freedom as opposed to “ancient liberalism” which is oriented toward human excellence), contained within it an intrinsic tendency towards extreme relativism, which in turn led to two types of nihilism.
The first was a “brutal” nihilism, expressed in Nazi and Bolshevik regimes. In On Tyranny, he wrote that these ideologies, both descendants of Enlightenment thought, tried to destroy all traditions, history, ethics, and moral standards and replace them by force under which nature and mankind are subjugated and conquered.
The second type, the “gentle” nihilism expressed in Western liberal democracies, was a kind of value-free aimlessness and a hedonistic “permissive egalitarianism,” which he saw as permeating the fabric of contemporary American society.
In 2023, across the West, we are seeing and experiencing the second type.
from Indolent’s link on the ‘inhabited’ human story, which is worth a read.
If people wonder why I am such a fan of ancient mythologies, there’s your answer.
This is our centre, and we should cling to it, and to the cultural usages and memories of it today.
We must acknowledge our psychological and social universals; myths express these.
Just as world religions take heart from the truth values of older myths and tales.
So does our iconic literature, currently being ‘cleansed’ of many contextual meanings.
This sort of slack and off-hand academic commentary is meaningless, M0nty.
Define elements of lacking clarity. What are your criteria? What don’t you comprehend?
What sentences are poorly constructed and why? What is overly wordy in such a short piece? Is it repetitive in content? If so, where? Is there a false argumentation? If so, where? Is any reframing of an idea a help to the reader? If so, is that truly ‘over wordy’?
Lift your game, teacher.
Because women playing these games are still playing them as women, Dumbo.
They play the game ‘lite’ according to their female capabilities, which are lesser than men’s.
A nominal man comes in and plays like a man and knocks them out.
Deeply unfair.
In case you are wondering, M0nty, Roger and Dot make substantive critiques and contribute to a lively debate about Dover’s thoughtful piece.
Your ‘assessment’ does not. It is shoot from the hip foolishness.
F
But seriously, the point I was making was that if db submitted that piece as an essay at uni, it would not do well. It repeated
many points without adding anything. There are only so many ways to say “men are men, women are women and liberals are Satan”, and db went through most of them.
Self-professed “conservatives” often fall into the rhetorical hole of demonising their opponents as nihilists. It’s a straw man argument, not addressing the real debate.
The real debate is that in the diverse marketplace of ways to live that we now live in, his way of life is vanishing due to its internal conflicts and hypocrisies. Agnostics, non-cis and other godless heathens may not have perfect lives, but at least they are not living a lie.
Of course db doesn’t want to address that debate, so he makes one up where he auto-wins because propagation of the species.
“F
Coming from someone who failed economics.
The real debate is over what is true. A “diverse marketplace of ways to live” has always been with us – that “marketplace” has been different in various cultures and various times.
Reproduction has no internal conflicts or hypocrisies. It just is. Those conflicts and hypocrisies appear when we try to foist a lie onto the basic facts of anatomy – a person’s mental image of what something is doesn’t make it so. An example is the facile “born in the wrong body” description – no, you are not born in the wrong body. You only think you have been born in the wrong body. It becomes a matter of the mind, not physical fact.
Perhaps you are right about Dover’s way of life vanishing. It may be vanishing because of the triumph of feelings over reason.
There aren’t any stunts here. Nominalism and voluntarism have been at the heart of liberalism since the outset.
I’ve done this repeatedly.
Really, I haven’t said what I believe in relation to what? You’re just making stuff up now.
Sorry dot, but you’re trying to defend liberalism per se by simply defining it as classical liberalism. It won’t work. You sound like communists complaining about criticisms of Soviet politics by saying that it isn’t real communism, but state capitalism or Stalinism or the like.
This claim is always amusing given Protestantism’s close association with liberalism in Europe.
How is presenting arguments ‘bullying’, dot? You sound like a crybaby.
But you do because nominalism is in large part a pillar of modern philosophy.
Note that monty doesn’t actually provide any examples of how the essay is wrong. He doesn’t even say what the essay is about in any honest way, and then he tops it off by saying that the point of the essay doesn’t matter, but rather the point he thought should be addressed does. The narcissism involved.
Doing the passive/aggressive Zero for comments I make in good faith has exactly the opposite effect on me. It makes me absolutely determined to comment more.
And it means you have nothing of value to refute the points I amke.
Exactly. And the way around this, for liberals, is saying that that question is now ‘contested’. Then the question becomes how can we accommodate differences of belief in relation to question A. Via liberal neutrality which means the state will allow A but feign neutrality.
Dover – so the easy way out in modern times is to allow freedoms “to” do stuff that is contested for various reasons. But not to enforce freedoms “from” as that requires choosing one version of rights over another. The entry of trans biological males to female-only spaces is an example of this class of freedoms.
^class^clash … duh.
Liberalism isn’t the first ideal or faith taken to the extreme.
I’m a “cry baby” (???) because I define liberalism honestly and etymologically as classical liberalism, not dishonestly as it is (constitutionally) defined in another country?
Polite words almost leave me.
Just stop.
Liberalism is not popular and principled conservatism is less so (but I defy you to write a manifesto of sorts).
We both need all of the friends we can get. What does it profit you to conflate classical liberalism with progressivism? You’ve tacitly admitted they’re different.
m0ntysays:
April 21, 2023 at 7:23 am
D-
Poor sentence structure, overly wordy, lacking clarity.
Revise and resubmit.
But enough about the examiners’ comments on your Economics papers.
Self-professed “conservatives” often fall into the rhetorical hole of demonising their opponents as nihilists. It’s a straw man argument, not addressing the real debate.
m0nty=fa (again) displays his complete and utter lack of self-awareness.
Agnostics, non-cis and other godless heathens may not have perfect lives, but at least they are not living a lie.
The idea the “non-cis” are NOT living a lie could only come from someone who couldn’t even pass Economics 1.
callisays:
April 21, 2023 at 12:16 pm
Doing the passive/aggressive Zero for comments I make in good faith has exactly the opposite effect on me. It makes me absolutely determined to comment more.
And it means you have nothing of value to refute the points I amke.
Except for my own comments, whenever I see the zero unticks, I always try to give one to cancel it out. That might not be the intent of the zero-iser, but it is the effect.
No, I called you a crybaby because you claimed I was ‘bullying’ simply by raising arguments against liberalism.
Never.
I don’t know why you mention ‘principled conservatism’. I’m not interested in an alternative ideology; rather I’d prefer returning to sources in the classical tradition and not simply as a means of finding echoes of present-day ideologies.
Sure, and my criticisms of liberalism doesn’t mean that I don’t or won’t find common cause with them on A or B, but this doesn’t mean that they ought not be corrected for what I think are fatal problems.
If progressivism and liberalism share important premises and sources they need to be recognized and acknowledged. It’s not by accident that the societies most prone to progressivism are liberal societies.
Sure, but if A is allowed given the principle’s of X and you find A extreme then you have a problem with the principles themselves. One of them has to yield. It may just be that the principles are themselves extreme, not merely their outcomes.
Classical liberalism has Christian underpinnings, Dover. So X isn’t what you think it is just convenient.
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”.
If we can’t define terms in a precise way and agree on their common usage any discussion on the same ends up being debate on contested meanings.
Because women playing these games are still playing them as women, Dumbo.
They play the game ‘lite’ according to their female capabilities, which are lesser than men’s.
How about that Collingwood player who died from head injuries a few hours after an AFLW match?
Game ‘Lite’?
Ever actually seen a women’s Netball game up close?
It doesn’t sound like it.
rhetoric
defined terms
need all the friends we can get
what you think it is just convenient
the real debate is … etc
what a dialectical feast this is.
Tom has it right … paraphrasing:
Blind Freddie could tell you “INSERT -name of special cause” is a scam being run by cashed-up, power-hungry “INSERT – name of victim group” who can’t believe how easy it was to fool the good-natured people of “INSERT – dominant paradigm” into undermining one of the central institutions of their civilisation … “INSERT – name of special action”
Theseus said no to Procrustes
It doesn’t, really. Classical liberalism shares a pillar or two, for instance, with respect to the dignity of man, but it rejects other pillars, for instance, that the fundamental unit of society is the family, the idea of the common good, that rights flow from and are ordered towards the true and the good, and so on. Liberalism is in many respects a departure from those classical, Christian, underpinnings, often rejecting them or ignoring them.
You believe classical liberal “rejects” the family.
I didn’t say that above. I said liberalism, incl. classical liberalism, rejects the family as the fundamental unit of society.
Yes that’s what you said. You believe that?
Yes. Liberals believe that the individual is the fundamental unit of society. It’s why all contract theories since Hobbes begin with the individual alone and separate in a state of nature.
Okay, so how does the above support your contention that classic liberalism is inimical to the family?
Where have I contended that above?
You say Classic liberalism rejects……
But let me say this: your theory that classic liberalism rejects the family unit as the fundamental social unit is nonsense. Classical liberalism believes the individual is paramount. How this point somehow reaches your conclusion is an intellectual absurdity. If we’re all paramount,” then the family unit made up of individuals is too.
This is just smearing.
Not the same.
This isn’t my theory.
Not at all and you have the answer to the alleged absurdity itself, even though fundamental unit of society means something more than paramount, but base, first, analogue, in your answer. In any dispute between the individual and the family in a liberal state, the preference will be for the former than the latter.
How does that reduce the importance of the family when an individual is of fundamental social importance? It neither invalidates your concept nor make the family less important.
Because in any dispute the preference is always for the individual over the family. Re no-fault divorce, for instance, pretty clear that involves that preference.
For example, surrogacy, pretty clear it’s availability to singles, same -sex couples and throuples and the like, not simply married couples, involves not a mere preference of individual over family but the erasure of family as fundamental social institution.
You’ve given a description of things you don’t like. You haven’t explained how classic liberalism is a partial culprit for the things coming to the fore. How so?
Also, if individuals are paramount in classic liberalism, you have yet to explain how a family (who are individuals) becomes less important when thought of as a family unit. It just doesn’t make any sense.
In any event, the way you refer to liberalism has no focus and appears to be used just for things you don’t like.
You’ve just changed the question. You asked “How does that reduce the importance of the family when an individual is of fundamental social importance?” and I answered it. And, no, they are not just ‘things I don’t like’. I illustrated the point with two examples of recent history that indicate the trajectory of liberalism by reference to changes in family law. The change in the law re divorce clearly involves a preference for individuals over the family even where individual members of that family are harmed by the decision of one of the spouses. The limits placed on divorce law early on, by requiring some substantial fault (infidelity, abandonment, or abuse) indicate a concern for family life over and above the interests of one of the spouses (the individual) who simply may have lost interest, wanted to ‘find themselves’, or some other spurious reason. That the former were abandoned for the latter is instructive.
I never said “a family (who are individuals) becomes less important when thought of as a family unit” .
That’s exactly what you suggested. It appears that if one uses different words to describe your comments you claim it’s not what you said.
Lol, how does one change a question when it’s a question?
Also, a few points about divorce. Opposing no fault divorce is one thing, but I’m not buying the idea that divorce (with fault) is a bad idea. Home life for a family when a couple detests each other is neither good for them nor for kids listening to fighting and screaming all the time. No-fault divorce is a leftwing concoction, and the idea that classic liberals would support it (no fault) is ludicrous.
Here:
A Classical Liberal View of Divorce Laws
The piece was written at a classic liberal site
You’re asserting classic liberals support no fault divorce while the article suggests it was one worst things ever done to marriage. You really need to be very careful how you use and apply the word liberalism as it’s quite inaccurate.
No it wasn’t. I suggested that the if you move from the family to the individual as the fundamental unit of society, as is the case with liberalism, that would mean, to use your words, a family… becomes less important when thought of as ‘individuals’. It’s precisely that difference which I’m suggesting.
By asking me one question, having that answered, and then saying saying that you didn’t like the answer because it failed to answer another question.
Two things, firstly, I wasn’t arguing that fault divorce was a bad idea. I implied that fault divorce was a vestige of the classical, non-liberal conception of politics within classical liberalism, but the more that liberalism took command, the more the preference for family was surrendered to the individual. Secondly, the idea that classical liberalism and classical liberals never nor even now supported no-fault divorce is untenable. Moreover, much of liberalization of divorce laws in the UK/ US promoted in the late 18th-early 19th century was promoted by liberals, and as these priors were pushed towards their conclusion, the less onerous it would become to end a marriage.
Not sure that performs its task. Firstly, given that he founds and understand marriage as a mere contract, even though he makes ample reference other matters that complicate that, he ignores the problem of amical separation involves both sides simply voiding their obligations to the other and their children. Secondly, because he imagines that this is simply between two individuals, where is the consideration of family as an institution? He hints at the problems that flow from no-fault divorce but the analysis is all over the place.
Stick the present day context as going back to the 18th to the 19th century has little relevance to the present day and no fault divorce.
You argued that classic liberalism holds individuals paramount and you then went on to a discourse about how that’s placed the family unit at a lower level of social importance.
You highlighted no fault divorce.
The piece,by a classic liberal, in a classic liberal website counters your assertion.
You highlighted no fault as an example how “liberalism” lower the value of the family. As the family appears paramount to your ideas, it’s problematic that in the latest comment you say:
Is it or isn’t it a bad idea in terms of the value of the social value of the family unit.
The issue here is that db prefers traditional families to be the centre of society, i.e. patriarchal dominance. Liberalism and progressivism both agree that this is antithetical to freedom.
You can argue semantics with him until the cows come home, but the real problem here is that db is using weasel words to cloak his real agenda, which is to return to the good old days when men were kings and women were chattel.
Yes, liberalism and progressivism both oppose db’s world view. That is because his world view is based on subjugation. That doesn’t mean liberals and progressives agree on much else… but they do agree that Christianist radicals like db are froot loops.
No, in a response to bespoke about classical liberalism and its purported Christian underpinnings I said that it rejections the family as the fundamental unit of society. Everything that followed directly answered your questions.
It doesn’t really. It actually confirmed my point re family as fundamental unit of society because he understood the family as merely a contract between individuals.
No, it isn’t. Read what I said again: I illustrated the point with two examples of recent history that indicate the trajectory of liberalism by reference to changes in family law. The change in the law re divorce clearly involves a preference for individuals over the family even where individual members of that family are harmed by the decision of one of the spouses. The limits placed on divorce law early on, by requiring some substantial fault (infidelity, abandonment, or abuse) indicate a concern for family life over and above the interests of one of the spouses (the individual) who simply may have lost interest, wanted to ‘find themselves’, or some other spurious reason. That the former were abandoned for the latter is instructive.
In what way isn’t the above clear?
Men and women are literally dumping their spouses and their children for the most spurious and self-centred reasons and monty wants to characterize opposition or criticism of this as simply about “subjugation”.
This is the ClownWorld that liberalism has brought about.
Where does classic liberalism describe the family as a series of contracts? You also need to explain what you mean by “fundamental” as it sounds more like a cartoonish representation.
Lastly, you were shown an excerpt from a writer explaining the classic liberal position on no fault divorce that entirely refutes your opinion.
From the article you just posted: The key is to recognize that as far as society is concerned, marriage is a contract between two individuals.
From above, I wrote: even though fundamental unit of society means something more than paramount, but base, first, analogue,
It doesn’t refute it in the slightest. It confirms what I’ve said. Did it exclude both mutually reneging on their promises to each other and their children? No. Does it defend a substantive view of marriage? No. It bases its view on no-fault divorce entirely on contract violation, however, given that other contracts can be terminated how does the classical liberal get over the hurdle of justifying the more onerous terms for termination of a marriage contract as compared to a employment contract, or phone contract, especially when liberals are currently in the business of expanding ‘marriage’ to gays, polyamorous arrangements, etc. If they can’t really enunciate a clear conception of marriage, how is that justification even possible?
That describes a marriage which is exactly a contract between two people. That’s not a family in terms of the way you’re describing it which infers kids.
But let’s stop here, you don’t believe a marriage is a contract (an agreement)?
Perhaps in a parallel universe it does where words mean different things. It’s pretty clear though, that the writer – a classic liberal- is against no fault divorce.
Here, I’ll post it again so you don’t forget.
Who gets to decide whether a marriage stays together? Local clergymen? A council of elders? The State?
What you are saying, db, is that you want to chain women to the crèche regardless of their desire for freedom. No wonder both liberals and libertarians oppose you. Your position is untenable in a modern society.
Fatboy
Why assume that it’s just sheilas “chained” to a marriage. It most certainly happens to men too. Shut up
There’s the problem, a marriage is not only a contract between two people. You need to know far more about a situation between two people, beyond there being an agreement/ contract, in order to determine that those two people are married. Moreover, the feature of there needing to be an agreement is in fact driven by these other characteristic features, that it could involve children, that, given this, the commitment between the spouses is lifelong, and so on.
No, he makes a terrible attempt at criticizing no-fault divorce by simply referring to it as a contract and I gave you examples that indicate that such a criticism fails at the first hurdle.
Supported by a majority of liberals in the 1960s and 70s, when they were enacted, and ever since.
You’re a ridiculous clown, monty. People that marry make vows to each other. A vow is a solemn promise. No one binds you to a spouse but yourself. However, if the marriage becomes unbearable because of abuse or infidelity, the innocent spouse has grounds to leave.
An agreement? 🙂
A promise isn’t an agreement. It may be part of one though.