Townhall.com George Will
WASHINGTON — It hurt her feelings, says Jane Fonda, sharing her feelings, that one of her husbands liked them to have sexual threesomes. `”It reinforced my feeling I wasn’t good enough.'”
In the Scottsdale, Ariz., Unified School District office, the receptionist used to be called a receptionist. Now she is “director of first impressions.” The happy director says, “Everyone wants to be important.”
Manufacturers of pens and markers report a surge in teachers’ demands for purple ink pens. When marked in red, corrections of students’ tests seem so awfully judgmental.
Fonda’s confession, Scottsdale’s tweaking of terminology and the recoil from red markings are manifestations of today’s therapeutic culture. The nature and menace of “therapism” is the subject of a new book, “One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance” by Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, M.D., resident scholars at the American Enterprise Institute.
My wife and I tried unsuccessfully to get pregnant for three years. As I did my five-mile run each night after work, I looked up at the stars and tried every prayer I could think of to ask God for help. Finally I couldn’t think any more prayers to say, so I just said “look God, I don’t know what else to say. I’m trusting that you have a plan for me and I’m waiting for you to make it happen.” Then my wife decided to leave her job, and along with it, her clueless, ungrateful boss and stressful commute. It was difficult to lose her income but the job was taking a toll on her physical and emotional well-being. So we paid down our bills to make the financial adjustment easier and finally she quit. Her last day on the job was March 31; she was pregnant by the end of May.
I’m not sure whar lessons to draw. First, as Christ told us, there is a God who listens to prayer, and it is important to put your feelings out there and talk to God. Second, if I had pushed my wife to keep working so we could have more money, she would probably have remained physically stressed out and we wouldn’t have our child. Third, every situation is different, but we have to be open to the possibhility that God may be using events to get us to change or move us in a different direction. Dan and Jim: I will join my prayers with yours.
Is it just me or is this an example of the fanaticism that many justly fear from some on the right? Under the guise of “protecting the children” (it’s always about that, isn’t it?), Alabama Republican Gerald Allen wants to ban school libraries from not only carrying books about homosexuality or that contain homosexual references (including “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker) but books written by gay authors!!! This includes Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal.
“Allen originally wanted to ban even some Shakespeare. After criticism, he narrowed his bill to exempt the classics, although he still can’t define what a classic is.”
Shakespeare!!
Of course I wonder if this includes the Bible which also contains references to:
a) incest (Lot and his daughters)
b) polygamy (Solomon, David, etc.)
c) gross sexual imposition by warring tribes on women taken as booty (literally)
I’m not for putting Penthouse in the periodical shelves of high school libraries. But when we’re trying to ban Shakespeare and Gore Vidal simply because they have the temerity to state views inconsistent with the ones we’ve been told are correct, isn’t this censorship?
JamesK: Yes, it is censorship which is the bastion of those who feel intellectually inferior, spiritually insecure, and afraid. Of course, it is not the reserve of those on the “right” religious or otherwise. I have to ask, are books critical of the militant homosexual agenda being kept out by the well meaning librarians because of their “hate speech”–a form of censorship promulgated and espoused by the “left”?
It just goes to show that most people are profoundly uncomfortable with real freedom, especially spiritual freedom, why would John Calvin even have gotten a second look otherwise.
As far as a Christian social agenda is concerned, we have the opportunity to be active in politics and attempt to introduce and enact legislation that is in accord with Christian principals the same as anybody else. We ought to do that. Those laws should be really based on Christian principals, however.
God never forces anyone. He proclaimes the Truth, embodies the Truth, and leads us all to the Truth, but we make the ultimate choice to embrace the Truth and submit to His Love or follow our own will and desires into isolation, death, and perdition.
As Jesus, St. Paul and many others have aptly stated, “The wages of sin is death”. We should fear the isolation and separation from God to which homosexuality can lead far more than any ill-informed attempt to force virtue on an unwilling public.
Note 53: Interesting premise. Now, I’ve criticized “hate speech” laws before as censorship as well, but let’s go with your idea, here.
So censorship is okay as long as what’s being censored runs contrary to our beliefs (whatever they may be) or written by someone we don’t like (i.e., gays).
Why not ban books on Hinduism and Buddhism where these religions are portrayed as anything other than paganism? Let’s ban Harry Potter as being “too occult”. While we’re at it, let’s toss out “The Wizard of Oz” (portrays witches in a positive light), books by Rush Limbaugh (written by a drug addict and serial adulterer … excuse me, one who’s engaged in many sacred marriages) and anything by the Trinity Broadcast Network (whose book sale profits will surely just end up going towards another 45-pound lavender wig for Jan).
Is this what “freedom” in a Christian nation looks like? It’s certainly not mine.
Note 54. James, there is a difference between censorship and appropriate placement of books and magazines. I don’t want pornography on the racks in the supermarkets where my daughter can see them. I don’t go into gas station stores where they sell porn if my daughter is with me. I don’t want gay friendly materials in high school libraries. I want the porn regulated on the internet where encountering it is almost unavoidable (even elementary school kids stumble on it — try whitehouse.com for example). I don’t think its appropriate to replay Madonna kissing Britney Spears over and over again on mainstream television.
Crying censorship anytime someone wants to clean up the sewer, or trotting out the extremist who wants to ban Shakespeare everytime a clean up is suggested, just excuses the further vulgarization of popular culture.
Porn has gone mainstream. Popular films are filled with mindless violence, advancing a philosophy of nihilism to impressionable teens who are old enough to absorb the spiritual impact it leaves in its wake but too young to analyze it.
Freedom requires a moral committment to the good of the neighbor. We are sacrificing the physical and emotional health of our young people (epidemic STD rates in the teen population for example) in our refusal to take moral account of how the culture informs and shapes them.
Peggy Noonan got it right a few years back: The Culture of Death.
JamesK: I didn’t say censorship was OK, only the urge is quite understandable and human. I am sorry I was not clear. Gerald Allen is an idiot who has no profound understanding of either moralilty of Christianity. His attempted legislation should be defeated and he should be held up to public scorn.
All law is built on the premise that some types of behavior and activity ought not to occur. The philosophical foundation on which the law(s) are promulgated determines what behavior is looked upon as illegal. I assume Mr. Allen’s ideas are to some extent built upon theocratic Calvinism (no free will, total depravity of man, etc). IMO pure Calvinism is blasphemy and therefore any laws with a Calvinist foundation I do not support. Theocracy is not a good way to govern.
As a matter of reality, once speech of any type is banned, all speech is in danger, thus it is proper to resist laws that ban speech that is merely expressive of ideas, regardless of the validity or morality of those ideas. Immoral, untrue ideas should be strongly countered with the moral truth rather than with governmental force.
However, when we become more outraged by political grandstanding than we are by clearly damaging, immoral behavior, our priorties are a little out of whack. Homosexuality is sinful behavior. When privately engaged in, only those who commit the sin are severly damaged. However, when militant activists continually attempt to change an entire culture’s definition of right and wrong and indeed the culture’s understanding of what it means to me human, we need to find appropriate ways to fight. Our outrage is more appropiately directed at the insane and arrogant attempt of the militant homosexuals and their apologists to force society not only to tolerate their behavior, but to approve of it.
Note 56: Thank you for clarifying. Again, I think sensible people will agree that pornography certainly has no place in public school libraries. I also perhaps could have been less blunt, but few things get me on my proverbial soap box as do issues of censorship.
A free range of ideas is necessary for the development of our minds, and putting books by both Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken in a school library simply encourages healthy debate.
As far as the negative impact of television and films on us, I have mixed feelings on this. How much violence is too much? I don’t have an answer. Would repeated viewings of the “Passion of the Christ” with its many violent scenes serve to weaken our reactions against violence or strengthen them? Another film such as “Saving Private Ryan” doesn’t really seem to promote war as much as remind us of its horrors. An argument could be made that it could have been done with less gore, but the impact may have been lost.
I saw an expose on the pornography industry on PrimeTime (or maybe Dateline). Certainly, it appears that those involved (esp. women) are often degraded and humiliated. There’s nothing good about it. On the other hand, knee-jerk reactions against all nudity seem also to be misplaced: is the viewing of a female breast during a surgical procedure really “indecent”? I can’t in all honesty say it would be.
Again, these moderate views are hard to define, and more difficult to enforce.