Here is one Q and A from the column:

“Q: How do you so easily dismiss the accumulated wisdom of all higher civilization?

A: Because liberals value feelings, not wisdom. And our feelings led us to the decision to force Massachusetts to redefine marriage.”

I have an alternative explanation:

Q: How do you so easily dismiss the accumulated wisdom of all higher civilization?

A. Because we view “tradition” as “the accumulated prejudices and hatreds of past ages that were less enlightened than our own age” and we wish to escape “the dead hand of the past that weighs so heavily upon us” and move forward into enlightenment, to make progress rather than be stuck with the old ways of doing things.

I take Mr. Prager’s point about feelings triumphing over reason, but that does not explain why these judges have certain feelings about gay marriage in the first place, and why others of us do not share those feelings and thus don’t really have to use our reasoning powers in some pitched battle to overcome those feelings. Our gut feelings about long-settled ways, traditions, customs, manners, etc., are simply diametrically opposed to leftist feelings on those same matters.

It’s not clear whether Mr. Coleman thinks that the judges’ feelings are wrong because they are subrational, or whether he thinks the judges’ feelings are equally subrational as our own. If he does, then he’s not coming from the same place as Prager. Prager stated the opposition as one between the accumulated wisdom of the ages on one side, and feelings on the other. Mr. Coleman re-states the opposition as one between gut feelings and gut feelings.

The majority of conservative men-in-the-street are not political philosophers, not well educated in political philosophy, and would probably not be able to convincingly articulate why tradition should be respected, yet they still think that it should. A minority of conservatives, including Mr. Prager and the posters on this board, could actually articulate a political defense of following tradition. Thus, Mr. Prager’s objection to the Massachusetts judges is not subrational, nor is mine or Mr. Auster’s, but I thank God that, among the masses who approach politics (when they think about it at all) from a subrational level, there are at least as many whose subrational leanings are in the directions of tradition, custom, habit, and common sense as there are on the side of gut-level faux “compassion” and what-not.

Mr. Coleman makes an interesting point. If most human beings did not approach many or most issues with a subrational approach, then it is questionable whether we would need such things as tradition, custom, and habit as much as we do.
Furthermore, even rational people approach some issues, or at least partly approach issues, from a subrational level, or perhaps from an instinctive level. No one has time to analyze everything, and I do believe that our subconscious tells us some things (for that matter, so does God), and so sometimes we have to go with our gut, at least in part.
In any case, part of any good functional society is to build traditions and customs so that people’s subrational side is used in making decisions, it is wont to choose the better path.

Messrs. Coleman and Jose are of course correct that subrational attitudes and values—gut feelings—have a basic indispensable function in human society. But that was not the issue here. I disagreed with Mr. Coleman because it seemed to me that he was reducing the debate to a matter of our gut feelings versus the gut feelings of the other side: “Our gut feelings about long-settled ways, traditions, customs, manners, etc., are simply diametrically opposed to leftist feelings on those same matters.” If I was mis-reading him, he could correct me.

Well, I was saying that our subrational instincts are diametrically opposed to leftist subrational instincts, but I was NOT saying that to the exclusion of our reasoning also being diametrically oppsoed to leftist reasoning. We have fundamental, transcendent assumptions that are axiomatic to us, to which the left does not assent, so there is no hope of our reasoning being in agreement any more than our instincts.

As to the Massachusetts judges, one can either charitably accept that they were engaged in reasoning, and then show why their premises are flawed, or one can posit that they were not engaged in reasoning at all, but were merely engaged in leftist emoting on the issue, in which case one can argue why it is that leftist emotions tend to be trained and guided by the wrong instincts. I would be happy to take either approach. They are both true of leftism vs. conservatism in general, and both seek to meet the enemy on whatever ground he is occupying at the moment (emoting or reasoning). However, in this specific case, Prager was saying that they were emoting while we seek the wisdom of the ages rather than feelings. I was just pointing out that leftist have a gut-level, instinctively negative reaction to anything that purports to be “the wisdom of the ages”, while we do not.

I think perhaps the point is that while everyone use subrational instincts in making decisions, the point of being a judge is that you actually decide things on a rational basis (which is why people need training to be judges).

In other words, in deciding the issue on a subrational basis, the judges were shirking their responsibility as professionals.

Traditional Catholics must see it as a tremendous confirmation of their view of things, that Massachusetts, the birthplace and fountainhead of American Calvinist Protestantism, became the most liberal, anti-God state in the Union!

Traditionalist Protestants or Calvinists would no doubt reply that it was not Protestantism that made Massachusetts so liberal, but the influx of all those Irish Catholics and other non-traditional Americans.

(Please, I’m not trying to stir up the Catholic-Protestant wars here, I’m just making a passing observation.)

Both would be correct, in a sense. The old-line WASP families who would become part of the US ruling elite drifted away from the vigorous Calvinism of the Colonial and early Federal era into a mushy Unitarianism. The Bush family could be taken as a case study. On the other hand, many Catholic immigrants, cut off from the powerful church back in an earlier Ireland, fell into the liberal socialist mindset. The Kennedys could serve as our example here. I don’t think either Catholicism or Protestantism is the real problem or root cause. The adoption of liberalism as a substitute for real Catholicism or Protestantism is the real issue.

But Carl’s answer would not explain why Massachusetts became the most liberal of all the states—and also the most self-righteous and superior about its liberalism. I think the reason is intimately tied to Massachusetts’ Puritan origins. Liberalism, it has often been noted, is the secularized form of Protestantism. But Puritanism or Calvinism was the most extreme form of Protestantism, representing an attempt to form an actual community of saints on earth. So, when a formerly Puritan people became secularized, they became the most self-righteously liberal of all peoples. With no God above them, their “sainthood” became an immanent experience, based not on faith in God, but on devotion to liberalism. This attitude became part and parcel of the Boston/Massachusetts mental environment. Thus a descendent of Greek Orthodox immigrants, Michael Dukakis, could exhibit all the impossible smugness and sense of superiority of the secular Puritan (characteristics also seen in the typical Harvard professor). Kerry, of half-Jewish and half Puritan ancestry, is even worse, exuding a sense of his own precious chosenness and of the base unworthiness and repulsiveness of everything that is not like himself, namely Bush, the “special interests,” Enron, and America.

Mr. Auster makes a very interesting observation about the how when Calvinists abandon their faith for liberalism, they morph into some of the most self-righteous liberals to be found anywhere. I can think of two additional examples where this has happened: Holland and South Africa. Both were really established by Calvinists (For South Africa I’m thinking of the Afrikaners here, not the English who arrived later). The former Calvinist bastion of the Netherlands is now a notorous cesspool of radical liberalism of all sorts - along with swarms of Muslims. The recent EU demand that the monastery on Mt. Athos must admit women apparently originated from complaints filed by some Dutch lesbians who were forbidden to enter, by way of example.

In South Africa, the great betrayer of the whites was DeKlerk, an Afrikaner who embraced liberalism. I recall Mr. Sutherland mentioning that one of the Mass. Supreme Court judges responsible for this travesty was an Afrikaner immigrant from South Africa, which is currently degenerating into a total hellhole. Calvinists who fall away from the faith are similar to Jews who abandon Judaism in this regard. They become some of the most fanatical and ardent supporters of liberalism - true believers in the new faith. I put Bush in the same category as Kerry here. That’s what makes the upcoming Presidential race so odd: Kerry is attacking the scion of a wealthy liberal (formerly Protestant) family whose background and worldview is really quite close to his own.

While I agree with the substance of Carl’s 0102 11 Feb comment, from her surname I think the head legislatress of the Mass. SJC is an British South African. While there were Afrikaners active in opposition to apartheid, most of the most vocal white South African opponents were British (or at least non-Afrikaner) and Jewish. Afrikaners never lost their Calvinist faith as thoroughly as did their Dutch brethren. HRS

According to law professors Doug Kmiec and Mark Scarberry, under Massachusetts law judges can be removed without cause by a simple majority vote of the legislature and approval of the Governor and his Council. It would only take a few principled members of that body, plus some media coverage, to generate some terrific heat on this issue, which should be posed as one of judicial irresponsibility.

Protestant … Roman Catholic … who’s to blame — What?????? OK, so the Calvinists go liberal and make big waves. Seems to me the Roman church is in a pickle too, with their leader kissing Korans and doing his wholesome part to contribute to the suicide of Western Civilization — or is Mr. Wojtyla a Calvinist too?? Right there with fallen and falling ‘protestants.’ I think there’s enough blame to go around, if it matters.

This is not the time to be pointing fingers. This is the time for all of us who believe in Jesus Christ, and believe in His Word to fall on our knees in repentence and prostrate ourselves before a holy and righteous God and beg — and I do mean BEG — for forgiveness, and intercede in tears for our diseased and dying civilization.

Mr. LeFevre is right, about the Pope and about Christians’ duty. HRS

I ought to clarify my last post by noting that the questions being by Mr. Auster and Carl are perfectly valid points of discussion.

I got hung up on Mr. Auster opening sentence, which assertion has indeed been made here back and forth, and I had wanted to offer a point on it, though this might not have been the best occassion.

Simply stated I think that we who are Christians need to recognize that we all bear responsibility for the direction our culture has taken. We have failed to be the salt of our civilization, and we all have to accept blame for not holding forth a more resolute defense of God’s truth as is our solemn duty. (Recall God’s assessment on the sin of one man, Achan: “Israel hath sinned.”)

Our primary emphasis then should not be trading recriminations about it — talk about fiddling while Rome burns! — but to meet our responsbility here in humility, joining to implore God’s mercy and intervention. Even Ninevah was spared for one more generation.

Thanks to Mr. Sutherland for backing up that point, in the spirit intended.

I completely agree with Mr. LeFevre’s comment of 5:05 PM. Mr. Sutherland’s earlier points regarding the demise of South Africa are well taken also - I personally know a couple of Afrikaners who were supportive of Mandela & Co. Of course, in a classic unprincipled exception to their liberalism, they departed the utopia they helped to create and now live here in flyover country.

I think one of the under-emphasized areas of our struggle is the need to reclaim our churches (Catholic , Orthodox, and Protestant) - which all too often fall under the influence and even control of liberals.

Although the interview is certainly amusing, I am not sure that it is any more insightful and true than interviewing a dead Richard Nixon.

I will not seek to answer every question Prager makes, but I’ll at least offer one to the “higher civilizations” questions.

A: We feel comfortable challenging the wisdom of higher civilizations because one of the greatest notions of any higher civilization is the notion of progress - the notion that, over time, old ideas get cast aside.

And, perhaps, for the question of whether two gay men can bring the same parenting as a mother and father.

A: We do not see it as much as a question of whether two men can bring the same parenting as a man and a woman, so much as whether two men can bring better parenting than no parents at all outside of an overworked foster care system.

I have no idea if either of these points were on the minds of any of the four justices. But it does seem to me that the issue is more resistant to reductionism than one might think.