Majorityrights Central > Category: Oh Tempora, Oh Mores

Please … no crudities about the new vulva concept car.  Let’s be gentlemanly and tasteful here.  Volvo has showed its new, all-girl designed concept vehicle for ladies at the Geneva Motor Show.  And, attention being a positively genetic necessity for all lady designers, world-wide attention has it attracted.

The press has picked up on the fact that, given the chance apparently, girlies go for a nice, accessorisable set of wheels.  Know what I mean, John.  Good runner.  One lady owner.  Embroidered cloth interior - to match your mood, y’know.  Looks pretty in pink as a matter of fact.  Plenty of room for, erm … well, the whole thing’s a handbag, mate.  Take it from me, a bleedin’ handbag.  And a dressing table.  And a flower pot.

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Partisans of either the “pro-life” or “pro-choice” positions on abortion will have us believe there is no middle ground between these poles. This is, of course, nonsense. For example, the “pro-choice” American libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard opposed the US Supreme Court’s “Roe Vs. Wade” decision. This effectively made abortion a right for Americans. Rothbard dissented on the grounds that it centralised decision making on an issue rightfully and best left to state and local jurisdictions. A “pro-life” colleague of Rothbard, Martin Anderson takes up the decentralist argument against Roe Vs. Wade here. The Rothbard / Anderson example shows that compromise here is possible.

What interests me is the amazing extent to which abortion has now been made sacred. To criticise abortion or people who have abortions is to expose oneself to all sorts of tut tutting and the moralistic tones of disapproval that, we are told, are supposed to be reserved for those who “fart in church”. Even learned Church leaders, from Churches doctrinally opposed to abortion, treat the consumers and suppliers of the abortion industry with kid gloves. Even attempts to deal pragmatically with the economic and military consequences of what amounts to a de facto small-l liberal population policy, of which abortion rights is certainly an inherent part, are inhibited by the sacred status of abortion.

This is by no means a local Australian or even western issue. That sanctified and august body, the United Nations, an outfit Roger Kimball calls a “saintly institution”, even believes it has the right to bring Poland into line for not following small-l liberal dogma.

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“Modern man does not love, but seeks refuge in love; does not hope, but seeks refuge in hope; does not believe, but seeks refuge in a dogma.” —Nicolás Gómez Dávila

I think that this outlines a central flaw in the modern soul.  Everything good and great exists as a means to a pitiful and self-serving end.  We justify our lives by the metric of personal satisfaction.

Something perfectly pointless, egregiously superficial and just plain corny has passed into history with the decision by ABC to drop Miss America from it’s 2005 schedule.  It isn’t a passing that will trouble many.  Last month’s pageant drew a record low of 9.8 million viewers.  The American public has pronounced sentence on the high heels and swimwear, the tiara tat and tearfulness in victory.  No more brilliantly smiling hopefuls from Abbeyville or Rainbow Springs will tell the nation that, yes, they adore children and just want the chance to work for a better world.  I don’t know what “totter off in peace” would be in Latin.  But something like that would seem to be appropriate.

OK, so what?  The Humourless Ones For Whom No Man Ever Cared will savour the moment, obviously.  But why should we bother about the passing of these cattle markets?  Well, it’s simple really.  We should bother because there is more to this than a minor, overdue triumph for sexual equality.  We should bother because of what it tells us about our own wives and daughters and the people they and we have become.

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So here we are, online.  After four months of planning we have arrived at that precipitate moment.  The first post.  The one that should welcome, introduce, explicate, commend … and get the blog rolling.  The one that, like a best man’s speech, doesn’t need to say too much and doesn’t need to go on too long.  Just so that it leaves the reader with a crank-handle sense of something vital and positive having begun.

A tall order, then.

Well, maybe.  Maybe not.  I’ve looked into a few of these first post offerings lately.  They are by no means all successful.  Simplicity seems to be the safest if, perhaps, most unadventurous option.  You know … just a few spare but elegant phrases that go to the heart of what it means to blog on politics and what, in addition, it will mean to blog here.  That ought not to be too challenging.

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