Crunchy contemplations

Read Rod Dreher on marriage and emotivism.

Dreher also comments on some recent debates about genetics and I.Q. I haven't the time, the expertise, or the inclination to wade into that particular roiling sea of acrimony, but I am interested in one of the tangential issues that Rod considers. He points out that to question the belief in intellectual egalitarianism is dangerous because "we live in a time in which belief in the inherent dignity of the human person is collapsing." One's humanity or "personhood" seems increasingly, in our society, to be defined by qualities (certain levels of sentience and cognition, for example) that are not inalienable, so that it becomes possible for human beings, not only to start off as non-persons, but also to become non-persons. I would agree with Dreher, and some of the commenters he cites, who suggest that some people who are uncomfortable even discussing the idea of the heritability of intelligence are uncomfortable precisely because they think of less intelligent people as somehow essentially inferior. That's a problem bequeathed to us, in the main, by secularism and "progressivism," and by the logic of our post-Christian world.