Drivel

Here's some snippets from an interview with Senator Kerry and his wife.

THK: "I think men are supposed to be boys always. They just go through different stages and if wives understand that they can love them."

What an interesting, and profoundly disturbing, view of human relationships. As a man I find this incredibly insulting and frightening. I've seen older males behave like boys. Every promiscuous jerk that treats women as playthings is a boy in a man's body. Every violent thug who fights over a football jacket or pair of over-priced tennis shoes is a boy trapped in a man's body. Not all males are like this, though more have developed (or, rather, refused to develop) into older children because society expects them to do so.

There are several reasons for this. One is feminism. Or, rather, the sort of extreme militant feminism that traces every problem back to the Y chromosome. Of course men are boys, and of course men are supposed to be boys. Men are stupid. If women were in power the world would be a happy place where the sun never sets and rainbows paint the bright blue sky.

Another is statism, an inherently evil concept (I know, this sounds libertarian, but that's only partially true). The latter half of the twentieth century has shown us what happens when adult males refuse to grow out of boyhood. Children grow up fatherless (sons turn into depraved jerks off the old block, girls turn into sluts and worse). Popular entertainment (which focuses on immediate gratification rather than cultivation) replaces culture; any "culture" that remains is just an attempt by the little boys and girls to imitate adults (the Old Oligarch is pretty much right about ballet, for instance; it has no value in itself and people appreciate it because it gives them a false sense of maturity and importance). As a corollary education disintegrates (teachers are supposed to befriend, not teach, their students; the list of insane practices is well documented). Where society disintegrates the state must step in (or, society disintegrates because the state steps in). Think of the Scouring of the Shire. Statism is evil because it seeks to replace the individual moral actor with the machine of the state. Individuals are reduced to the level of children and civilization begins to fade.

[Note that my beef is with statism, the outgrowth of Weber's theories on bureaucracy and the like, not with government in itself, as my thoughts on Aragorn the King should indicate.]

Kerry, on his divorce: "I think the absolute key is to make the initial decision that no matter what happens you've got these kids together and they are what it's all about. And it's hard sometimes but you have got to put their lives ahead of your lives. ... She did an incredible job as a mother. ... And she made up for a lot of my deficits and I have to acknowledge that." More Kerry: "Anything negative we tried to keep away from them. I was supportive of her mothering and she was supportive of my fathering."

If Kerry really did want to put the lives of his children ahead of his own interests, perhaps he should have avoided the divorce. His later comments about the difficulty of breaking the news to his girls is indicative. Children are fragile, and need a stable home (I'm not referring just to youths: it was bad enough that my father died; I'm not sure what I would have done had my parents divorced, even at my age). They can't just roll with the punches and make way for mommy #2 or daddy #2 when their parents remarry. What actually follows from Kerry's comments is the conclusion that divorce is not an option for a married couple (at least one with kids, as we're examining his words at the moment).

Of course, such non-rational (read: dishonest, perhaps?) thinking shouldn't surprise us. The good Senator does acknowledge that abortion is the killing of individual human beings, but he's fine with that anyway.