Not on the News Tonight
My favorite articulation of the self-evidence of human hypocrisy is by a Frenchman—a nation of cunning linguists: “Hypocrisy is the respect vice pays to virtue.” What do slavery and abortion have in common? Too much. Tweet
Highlights
We can all admit that the golden rule is still golden—even if the comportment of our nation of believers in the gold standard is only bronze at best.
Slavery is an example of our country not even placing in a medal category.
Women's suffrage is another.
Abortion is another. Say what?!
Obviously, the idea that “All men are created equal” and the reality of slavery are in contradiction.
If the claim of human equality is true, then slavery is wrong and unjust. Simple.
If the claim of human equality is true, then slavery is wrong and unjust. Simple.
The confederacy would eventually question the nature of that proposition. But they lost that war.
It is true that folks thorough history have dealt pretty well with human hypocrisy.
My favorite articulation of the self-evidence of human hypocrisy is a by Frenchman—a nation of cunning linguists:
“Hypocrisy,” wrote La Rochefoucauld, “is the respect vice pays to virtue.”
But it turns out there is something even worse and lower than hypocrisy. Creating a standard of right that that flips the moral script—making the low golden and giving a people a standard to live down to.
That’s good.
We can all admit that the golden rule is still golden, even if the comportment of our nation of believers in the gold standard is only bronze at best.
But slavery is an example of our country not even placing in a medal category. Women’s suffrage is another. Abortion is another. Say what?!
I just love how folks today can’t imagine how anyone back in the bad old days of slavery could stand by and give continence to the ghastly idea of treating human life as property.
The logic of Dred Scott is at the core of the rights-talk used to justify abortion today. A women has ownership of her body and whatever she wants to do with it.
Just something to think about.
Another observation. One reason that explains our present moral blindness is that we are no longer hypocrites in the good French sense. We have found something worse than hypocrisy.
Today I heard on the news—that machine where we get explanations of what’s happened in the world—that Covid deaths over the past two years have surpassed the body count of the Civil War, which took five years. Another sad fact: in 2011, just over a million lives were lost to abortion. Now we’re at around 850,000 a year, still more than have died from Covid since the pandemic began.
I am a fan of the music Jack Johnson. His song The News captures moral inattentiveness of the diagesis of our public discourse:
A billion people died on the news tonight
But not so many cried at the terrible sight
Well mama said
It’s just make believe
You can’t believe everything you see
So baby close your eyes to the lullabies
On the news tonight
Who’s the one to decide that it would be alright
To put the music behind the news tonight
Well mama said
You can’t believe everything you hear
The diagetic world is so unclear
So baby close your ears
On the news tonight
On the news tonight
The unobtrusive tones on the news tonight
And mama said
Why don’t the newscasters cry when they read about people who die?
At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes
Mama said
It’s just make believe
You cant believe everything you see
So baby close your eyes to the lullabies
On the news tonight
With abortion, they are neither reading nor crying on the news tonight. 😢
“We the People” are in need of a Second Sexual Revolution.
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