Steyn's latest
On The Party of Death:
The Party Of Death is a very tightly argued case: by halfway through, Ponnuru had made me realize he was pro-life for much better reasons than I am. Yet the book isn't about abortion per se, so much as "the politics of personhood." One consequence of abortion is that, in designating new life a matter of "choice," it made it easier to make judgments about which lives are worth it and which aren't. Down's syndrome? Abort. Cleft palate? Abort. Chinese girl? Abort. But it's foolish to think you can raise entire populations -- not to mention generations of doctors -- to make self-interested judgments about who lives and who doesn't and expect them to remain confined to three trimesters. The "right to choose" is now being extended beyond the womb: the step from convenience conception to convenience euthanasia is a short one, and the step from convenience euthanasia to compulsory euthanasia shorter still.
On the difference between the American and European sense of community:
You really need a Euro-Michael Adams to answer those questions [about the strange anonymity of death in Europe]-- to point out that Americans' collapsing communities are driving them to flock to grim rain-swept cemeteries and huddle round burial plots of friends and family in the forlorn hope of recovering the lost sense of society obliterated by their paranoid Second Amendment fearfulness, while the Frenchman by contrast affirms his belief both in personal interconnectedness and collective responsibility by spending the weekend with his wife's sister at a nude beach on the Côte d'Azur, secure in the knowledge that his dead mother on ice in the meat locker back in town is the state's problem, not his.
I seem to have wandered a long way from the Timbit Nation, but not really: as the pieties of late 20th-century progressivism crumble like a stale cruller, their defenders take refuge in self-deception, trumpeting defects as virtues, to the point where a man cradling his coffee alone in a doughnut shop on a Sunday morning is a stronger affirmation of community than a packed church. Oh well. If there's an emptiness at the heart of the advanced social-democratic state, at least Canada's worshipping the doughnut; Europe's worshipping the hole.
Read the whole thing.
(Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt)
The Party Of Death is a very tightly argued case: by halfway through, Ponnuru had made me realize he was pro-life for much better reasons than I am. Yet the book isn't about abortion per se, so much as "the politics of personhood." One consequence of abortion is that, in designating new life a matter of "choice," it made it easier to make judgments about which lives are worth it and which aren't. Down's syndrome? Abort. Cleft palate? Abort. Chinese girl? Abort. But it's foolish to think you can raise entire populations -- not to mention generations of doctors -- to make self-interested judgments about who lives and who doesn't and expect them to remain confined to three trimesters. The "right to choose" is now being extended beyond the womb: the step from convenience conception to convenience euthanasia is a short one, and the step from convenience euthanasia to compulsory euthanasia shorter still.
On the difference between the American and European sense of community:
You really need a Euro-Michael Adams to answer those questions [about the strange anonymity of death in Europe]-- to point out that Americans' collapsing communities are driving them to flock to grim rain-swept cemeteries and huddle round burial plots of friends and family in the forlorn hope of recovering the lost sense of society obliterated by their paranoid Second Amendment fearfulness, while the Frenchman by contrast affirms his belief both in personal interconnectedness and collective responsibility by spending the weekend with his wife's sister at a nude beach on the Côte d'Azur, secure in the knowledge that his dead mother on ice in the meat locker back in town is the state's problem, not his.
I seem to have wandered a long way from the Timbit Nation, but not really: as the pieties of late 20th-century progressivism crumble like a stale cruller, their defenders take refuge in self-deception, trumpeting defects as virtues, to the point where a man cradling his coffee alone in a doughnut shop on a Sunday morning is a stronger affirmation of community than a packed church. Oh well. If there's an emptiness at the heart of the advanced social-democratic state, at least Canada's worshipping the doughnut; Europe's worshipping the hole.
Read the whole thing.
(Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt)
posted by Kate Marie | 9:17 AM | Permalink
|
5 comments
5 Comments:
KM, I did "read the whole thing," but I still do not understand this one part:
their paranoid Second Amendment fearfulness
Can you explain?
Hi CIV,
I think Steyn is referring back to the ridiculous characterization of Americans that he cites at the beginning of the article:
The other week, the Toronto Star assigned Kenneth Kidd to do a big story on Tim Hortons as an icon of Canadian identity. This was a couple of days before that odd incident with the fellow going into the men's room and blowing himself into a big bunch of Timbits, so nothing tricky was required, just the usual maple boosterism. And naturally the first thing Kidd did was call up the Canadian media's Mister Rent-A-Quote, Michael Adams, the author of Fire And Ice and American Backlash, and a man who can be relied upon to provide some sociological context to the lamest premise.
"Mr. Adams evidently thought about the old doughnut-chain thing for a nanosecond and then slotted it effortlessly into his grand universal theory about the difference in American and Canadian 'values.' Canadians are communal and gregarious, while Americans are paranoid and cowering in terror behind the gates of their stockades.
'Americans aspire to independence,' he told the Star's man. 'Their model is to drive out of town, Gary Cooper with Grace Kelly, and get on their ranch and she's in the kitchen and having babies and he's standing at the ranch gate with a gun, saying, "no trespassing."'"
His reference to paranoid Second Amendment fearfulness is an ironic reference to this caricature of Americans.
I must be dense -- it still doesn't click. But thanks for trying. I understand you, but not Steyn. Only in that reference, mind you. The rest was fine and I might even look up that book.
CIV -- Put that phrase of Steyn's in quotes, or read it aloud to yourself in a snide voice, and I think you'll hear what he was getting at.
Probably because they take our TV shows and movies far more seriously than we do, Europeans have some strange misperceptions about American life. I enjoy meeting Europeans who are visiting the U.S. for the first time, because they're almost always pleasantly surprised by what they find--and by how safe they feel.
Ah, I get it now. At least I think so. A good night's sleep and all the hints sank in.
Post a Comment
<< Home