If I Cannot Call Them "Whited Sepulchres"....

I read "The Irish Independent" as seldom as possible but David Quinn spoke for me yesterday. Addressing one of the fits of righteous indignation into which the majority of the Irish commentariat has driven itself of late, he observed

[E]ven allowing for the caricature that Old Testament morality is all about judgment and condemnation, what could possibly be more judgmental and condemnatory, more 'Old Testament', than the avalanche of criticism currently pouring down... ?

He goes on to bring up the "H" word again, and while he uses one of less helpful meanings identified by me the other day , the point that he makes is an excellent one:

In fact, the liberal hatred of hypocrisy is extremely dangerous because there are only two ways to avoid hypocrisy. The first is to live perfectly, while the second is to preach nothing. But none of us is perfect, and therefore the only sure way to avoid the charge of hypocrisy is option two, to preach nothing and abandon practically all standards.

(If his intention is to say that only "liberals" - whatever meaning that term has in the Irish context - hate hypocrisy, though, I do not agree with him.)

As I said recently, I have pulled back from using the term "whited sepulchre" to describe the commentators who surrender themselves so glibly to extreme schadenfreude, but I would love to to find a replacement, as I expect to need it again before long.

Terry Eagleton's Divine Devilry

Even when I am disagreeing with him, or struggling with his ideas,Terry Eagleton rarely fails to make me laugh.

He has done it most recently in a review in The London Review of Books. The book is "Accident: A Philosophical and Literary History" by Ross Hamilton , and in introducing the topic, Eagleton remarks that

Since [God's] freedom means that... there is no necessity about him, other than the necessity to be true to his divine nature, it follows that he did not need to create the world at all. He did it just for the hell of it.

He goes on

There was nothing in it for him. He could simply have remained indolently, luxuriously himself for all eternity. He might also have saved himself an unbelievable amount of trouble.

And

In this sense, the universe is an accident. This does not mean that God created it by mistake or in a fit of absent-mindedness. It means simply that like falling house prices or the invasion of Iraq, there is no necessity to it.

Unfortunately, this review is not available to non-subscribers.

More on Marriage

I wrote here on the subject of marriage just before Christmas. To me, most of what was interesting in that posting was referrable to some American websites. The sites describe themselves as being of an economics bent, which is not inaccurate, but it is important to know that, in general, they share a devotion to libertarianism. This is a common, but not universal, affliction of economists. Fortunately, it is not inconsistent with insightful writing and stimulating discusssion.

Now, from another libertarian site, I offer you another provocative article on the subject.

I was referred to the article myself by yet another libertarian, Arnold Kling, whose eye was caught by this passage in particular:

...Hedonic marriage is different from productive marriage. In a world of specialization, the old adage was that “opposites attract,” and it made sense for husband and wife to have different interests in different spheres of life. Today, it is more important that we share similar values, enjoy similar activities, and find each other intellectually stimulating. Hedonic marriage leads people to be more likely to marry someone of their similar age, educational background, and even occupation. As likes are increasingly marrying likes, it isn’t surprising that we see increasing political pressure to expand marriage to same-sex couples.

In general, we are still in an age of specialisation, but the trend inside relationships has, for some decades now, been in the other direction. Men are expected to take their turns feeding babies in the middle of the night, for example.

One may agree or disagree with this and the other views set out - my own views are not set in stone - but I say that this is useful material for rumination.

Let's Have More Inequality !

(Placatory note to my left-wing comrades: think multicultural, OK ?)

As he licks his wounds after losing his political career, Michael McDowell gets support for his position on inequalityfrom economist Arnold Kling.

A couple of months ago, I drew attention to another article by Kling. Like the earlier one, this article is yet another contribution to the debate on immigration which has continued even after the recent defeat of the proposed amendments to U.S. immigration legislation.

Quoth he:

Giovanni Peri writes [that]U.S.-born workers are climbing the educational ladder, acquiring interactive/analytic skills and progressively leaving the manual jobs that would put them in competition with immigrants. If the trend continues as expected, the day is not far off when virtually all manual labor will be performed by foreign-born labor. This implies large wage gains for native workers, since they will be able to specialize in language-intensive and interactive tasks that are typically far better paid.

While some people shudder at the prospect of a more stratified society with immigrants at the bottom, keep in mind that the biggest gainers by far in this situation are the immigrants themselves. They can expect to earn six to seven times what they can now make in similar jobs in their countries of origin.

So it's a win-win. We get more nannies, lawn-care workers, waiters, and hotel maids, the immigrants get more money, and our kids learn skills that keep them out of competition with the underclass. All we have to lose is our self-concept of an egalitarian society.

I can see why economists have difficulty selling our pro-immigration position.

It seems to me that this reasoning is equally applicable to the Irish position.

Incidentally, I see that Sam Brittan, for whose views I have enormous respect, "has a go" at crude equality crusaders in a recent article.

Wisdom

"The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation.

This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me ... What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom -- a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything ..."

The above is another extract from the Peggy Noonan article to which I referred earlier.

I think that she sums it up well. I say that because, as my friends will tell you, I expressed my final dis-illusion with Tony Blair, of whom I was an admirer, in almost identical terms.

That dis-illusion came, quite a bit before before Ms Noonan's, in the course of Blair's spectacularly foolish advocacy of the nvasion of Iraq.

Update on Sunday, July 15, 2007 at 11:09AM by Fergus O'Rourke

My earlier reference to Peggy Noonan's article has been expunged a few minutes ago, in the process of site housekeeping, as not meriting retention for posterity. I really do not think that you have been deprived of anything of permanent value.