Will someone think of the children!
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was the target this week of Sen Barbara Boxer's awkward attempt to make parenthood, or the lack thereof, a litmus test on who has the moral authority to commit American troops to combat. Earlier in the war Maureen Dowd made the same claim in a more strident and absolute manner, saying:
Call it the "Mommy Clause". Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made much of her role as a mother and grandmother and the qualifications that gave her to lead the House of Representatives.
Can another Million Mom March on Washington be long in coming, this time to protest the gun violence in Iraq that is killing our children?
The real problem with saying that only the mothers of servicemen in Iraq, or fathers for that matter, have absolute moral authority with regard to the war in Iraq, beyond explaining what that absolute moral authority should translates to with regard to the conduct of the war, is that all servicemen and servicewomen serving in Iraq or in any other theater of conflict are adults who have volunteered of their own free will to serve in our country's military. Sorry mom, but adults make decisions for themselves.
The idea of giving absolute moral authority to mothers basically infantilizes the men and women who serve this country. It symbolically denies to them their status as autonomous moral agents responsible for their own decisions, and turns them into passive victims helpless to fend off the predations of an imperial ruling class. As Christopher Hitchens rightly labeled it, it is "sinister piffle".
We should start to call the Democrats the "Piffle Party".
But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.
Call it the "Mommy Clause". Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made much of her role as a mother and grandmother and the qualifications that gave her to lead the House of Representatives.
Can another Million Mom March on Washington be long in coming, this time to protest the gun violence in Iraq that is killing our children?
The real problem with saying that only the mothers of servicemen in Iraq, or fathers for that matter, have absolute moral authority with regard to the war in Iraq, beyond explaining what that absolute moral authority should translates to with regard to the conduct of the war, is that all servicemen and servicewomen serving in Iraq or in any other theater of conflict are adults who have volunteered of their own free will to serve in our country's military. Sorry mom, but adults make decisions for themselves.
The idea of giving absolute moral authority to mothers basically infantilizes the men and women who serve this country. It symbolically denies to them their status as autonomous moral agents responsible for their own decisions, and turns them into passive victims helpless to fend off the predations of an imperial ruling class. As Christopher Hitchens rightly labeled it, it is "sinister piffle".
We should start to call the Democrats the "Piffle Party".
posted by Anonymous at 2:18 PM
2 Comments:
I would love to be able to write like Hitchens.
Dowd, on the other hand ...
But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.
Reveals her to be a bimbo with a vocabulary. Off hand, and even with some effort, I don't think I could come up with a sentence that is both grammatical and even remotely as meaningless as distillation of self-contradicting bafflegarb.
Okay, let's grant that absolute moral authority.
What do you get when one parent asserts it was all a horrible waste, while another says her son's service, and sacrifice, was essential to our country's well being?
Two mutually exclusive absolute moral authorities, that's what.
How Dowd continues to get publised is, to me, the single greatest mystery in the universe.
BDS creates a big audience for such writers.
Dowd is a moron. She also is a terrible stylist, not that style is much of a consideration in choosing newspaper columnists.
Only a very few, like Donald Kaul and George Will, are graceful writers.
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