an excerpt:
Here we enter the realm of culture and ideas. For it is necessary not only to believe that it is economically feasible to behave in the irresponsible and egotistical fashion that I have described, but also to believe that it is morally permissible to do so. And this idea has been peddled by the intellectual elite in Britain for many years, more assiduously than anywhere else, to the extent that it is now taken for granted. There has been a long march not only through the institutions but through the minds of the young. When young people want to praise themselves, they describe themselves as "nonjudgmental." For them, the highest form of morality is amorality.
There has been an unholy alliance between those on the Left, who believe that man is endowed with rights but no duties, and libertarians on the Right, who believe that consumer choice is the answer to all social questions, an idea eagerly adopted by the Left in precisely those areas where it does not apply. Thus people have a right to bring forth children any way they like, and the children, of course, have the right not to be deprived of anything, at least anything material. How men and women associate and have children is merely a matter of consumer choice, of no more moral consequence than the choice between dark and milk chocolate, and the state must not discriminate among different forms of association and child rearing, even if such non-discrimination has the same effect as British and French neutrality during the Spanish Civil War.
The whole article is so stark I am almost tempted to say its author is depressed! He is obviously angry, but he is not shouting, and the quietness of his anger come across like bitterness or depression.
Can reality be this stark? I think most people who work with people who have these problems handle it by focusing on small successes and the bits and pieces of goodness and joy which still exist in these people and their lives.
Do others also think the welfare system is at least partially responsible for this, as the author does?
Is the situation essentially the same here? What ought to be done about it? If the welfare system could be ended, it would certainly cause some suffering during the time of transition. And there would be some suffering from the poverty of those who really could not be self sufficient even with the spur of genuine need. Would it be worth this to eliminate the suffering caused -if this author is correct-by the welfare system?
It seems odd that no one has commented on this.
Was it just too grim to think about?
SFP
I came out as 90% Catholic.
But it seems to me that almost any Christian would come out as Catholic on this quiz!
How would one have to answer this quiz to come out as a "Christian" ie Protestant evangelical?
Susan Peterson
Sorry, I thought I was commenting on the quiz thread. SFP