Tête-à-Tête-Tête

… Unlike the quote that inspired part 1 of this series, both the quote I’m interested in now, and the analysis from John Hawkins’ article do seem to represent conservative thought of the past decade or three accurately. I am skipping ahead a bit in the article, but I do intend to deal with all 10 quotes and their analyses. The quote is from Thomas Sowell, and it runs thusfully:

A succinct summary of the tragic vision was given by historians Will and Ariel Durant: Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.

Conservatism is big on cultural tradition. And this quote, as given, defends the notion of cultural tradition quite well. It is illustrative of the reason that Jim Jones’ followers should have been skeptical of him. No matter whether it is a cultural tradition, or a scientific fact, there will be crackpots who “know better” and who will present viewpoints appealing to non-skeptics, with the hope of overturning conventional wisdom to the advantage of their own ego. This is why science requires such a strong burden of proof for new and contentious theories. Unfortunately, our political reasoning hasn’t arrived yet at this level of rigor.

Unfortunately again, the ideal behind the quoted text is not always well reflected in conservative ideology. I quote Hawkins again, who provides his appropriately modern conservative application:

We’re far too cavalier as a society about tinkering with our society’s most important traditions and customs. We discuss making fundamental changes to marriage, to our cultural norms, and to the customs and laws that have helped preserve this country since its foundation with nary a thought to the lasting damage we may be doing to our society.

Hawkins is clearly talking about gay marriage more than anything else here. And he exposes the other side of Sowell’s idea very clearly. The other side is that there are ideas - even if less than 1 out of 100 - that are better than the ones any given society has settled “tradition” upon. The other side is that we cannot accept tradition unthinkingly, either, giving “nary a thought” to the potential for “lasting damage we may be doing to our society.”

In fact, this conservative argument would have been just as well suited to controversies over slave ownership, denying women the right to vote, Jim Crow, or any number of “traditions” that we have reluctantly discarded.

In fact, marriage inequality is not something that has gone unexplored with “nary a thought”. Bear that in mind, as it speaks to the validity of the presented premise. The health of couples, their children, and their communities has been studied over and over in the past 30 years, and though it should have been obvious from logic alone, it is readily apparent that marriage equality is a positive influence on both same-sex couples and their children. Such rigor takes longer to apply to “society”, but so far all indications are that society at least does not suffer from permitting this type equality in its midst. I cannot quote any specific study showing that the perpetuation of traditional norms are harmful to children, parents, or society, but I have cited anecdotal evidence here in the past, and I think that a case can be made that the potential for harm under such a conservative regime does exist, aside from the obvious harm to the couples in question. Most assuredly, I can cite real evidence that children raised by gay parents are not disadvantaged by that circumstance, and it follows that unreasoned fears of such harm to children or society are without foundation.

Traidition and culture are wonderful things, but one must be careful when declaring that one’s pet traditions are among those that have built a strong society and that we should therefore resist any amendments to those traditions. That is what the Saudis, Yemenis, and (up until 2002) the Talibani Afghanis were doing.

Another point is that equality, as with other liberal social perspectives, is not exactly a “new” concept.  It is simply one that is newly being applied in the area of marriage.  As such, the conservative view denying this equality (or making specious arguments from semantics to supposedly show that disallowing gay marriage already guarantees equality - which is effectively a denial of this type of equality) sets itself in opposition to our society’s egalitarian traditions - making it a proper subject of the type of skepticism suggested by Thomas Sowell.

The last point on this is kind of small, but still worth bringing up. Our quote talks about the lone crackpot. True, the lone crackpot, when pitted against the experience of ages, is very rarely the winner. But in most cases where liberalism challenges traditional orthodoxy, liberalism is not the voice of a single lone crackpot. Instead, it is the voice of a large many crackpots people who perceive an injustice being carried out. Had liberal voices prevailed in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda might never have found refuge there. At the very least, the centuries old Buddhist landmarks might not have been dynamited.

We owe it to ourselves and to our fellow human beings to investigate potential disparity in the rules - including “traditional” ones like religion and marriage - and to do our best to make these rules fair and equitable to everyone. Even HOMOS!!!!