Skip to main content

Limits? Hell no!

While listening to the always excellent Mars Hill Audio in which Ken Meyers was introducing a historian talking about the unintended consequences of the Reformation, he briefly mentioned how we Westerners think that limits are ridiculous.  I think about my friends (and in many ways I detest dividing people up by their political beliefs--but here goes) who are more leftish and how many of them would see limits put on an unfettered corporate capitalism or on the unjust use of the Earth either through extraction that pollutes or destroys or over-harvesting some natural resource.  Rightly so, I think.  I think about my friends on the right who would say that there are natural limits to human nature, including sexual expression, and we should respect those limits.  I'd agree with them too.  The problem comes with ideological blinders, however.  None of us (or very few, anyway) seem to see the big picture that with limits comes freedom and human flourishing.  The idea that we should be able to do whatever we want or can with our bodies, our wallets, our planet seems to be...well, a birthright.
So, we accept limits, but only the ones we agree with.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Worth Quoting

There are but three social arrangements which can replace Capitalism: Slavery, Socialism, and Property.                                                                                                 --Hilaire Belloc                                                                                                The Servile State
8 comments
Read more

Good reads of 2009

I haven't made a list like this in a while, and I believe I discussed most of these on the blog as I finished them, but I thought I'd make a handy short-hand list for you and me. These are only in the order I read them and do not indicate any preference. The Open Door * Frederica Mathewes-Green The Children of Hurin * J.R.R. Tolkien The Omnivore's Dilemma * Michael Pollan Agrarianism and the Good Society: Land, Culture, Conflict, and Hope * Eric T. Freyfogle Wonderful Fool * Shusaku Endo Up the Rouge: Paddling Detroit's Hidden River * Joel Thurtell and Patricia Beck Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation * Rodney Clapp (I started the following in December, but I haven't finished them--so far they are excellent: Love and Hate in Jamestown * David A. Price and The Picture of Dorian Gray * Oscar Wilde) Try one of these--let me know.
6 comments
Read more

Independent Women?

      During breakfast today I was reading an excerpt from a play in The New York Times Magazine (I know, I was a day behind and read Saturday's edition yesterday) entitled Rust .  The play, written by a professor at Grand Valley State University, here in Michigan, is a nonfiction drama about the closing of a GM plant in Wyoming, MI.  The play itself sounds interesting and I enjoyed the excerpt, but what caught my eye was something a character said.  The character is "Academic" and plays a historian and guide to the playwright, also a character.  He is explaining the rise of the automobile factories and the effect of the car on American culture.  He says, "Women became independent, they go from producers of food and clothing to consumers of food and clothing."  This was meant as an earnest, praiseworthy point.     I would counter with "How far we've fallen."  To say that a woman (or a man) is independent because she has moved from producer to cons
6 comments
Read more