Who says the liberal West doesn’t care—deeply care—about right and wrong?

Paul T. writes:

Ah, Canada leads the way again. On September 27, men who were concerned about violence against women and girls marched in downtown Toronto wearing high-heeled shoes, in an event promoted as “Walk a Mile In Her Shoes”:

Dare I suggest that the real agenda here wasn’t about violence? What next? Tampon Tuesdays?

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Daniel S. writes:

Such ridiculous displays point to modern Western man’s cold barrenness of soul. In his flight from God modern man lacks the sincerity and courage to take his nihilism to its logical consequence (as the characters in Dostoevsky’s novels did). Instead modern man is on a perpetual search for some new god to fill his emptiness, while at the same time staving off the reality of his own nihilism.

Jessica K. writes:

For a moment, I thought the white-haired man in the middle was Pope Benedict. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me.

Steve D. writes:

Many of the recent threads on VFR have made me realize that much of liberalism’s public face is simply paganism in practice. The ribbons, the candlelight vigils, the pointless legislation and “security measures”—they’re all propitiation ceremonies, various types of juju meant to keep the Bad Things at bay.

That photograph of men in high heels is a perfect example of the liberal propitiation ceremony: they can’t really expect this march to accomplish anything, can they? So it’s the “power” of the symbol alone they expect to be effective, in some mystical way you have to be a liberal to understand.

It’s also a perfect example of the depth to which the West has sunk. I think within a decade we’ll see men publicly castrating themselves, as they did in Rome. What is today merely symbolism will be enacted in fact.

LA replies:

This is a very insightful comment. All cults and cultures have at their core the re-enactment of acts that symbolize the sacred truth of that culture. But a culture can be oriented toward truth, or it can be oriented toward things that are insanely false and monstrous. Men marching in high heels to express their solidarity with oppressed Western women is an apt symbol of the dominant liberal culture of the West.

Malcolm Pollack writes:

I knew at once that the man in the middle wasn’t Pope Benedict. The Pope wears red shoes.

LA writes:

That photo of men wearing high-heeled shoes reminded me of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Free No.10” from his 1964 album, Another Side of Bob Dylan:

I sat with my high-heeled sneakers on
Waiting to play tennis in the noonday sun
I had my white shorts rolled up past my waist
And my wig it was falling in my face.
But they wouldn’t let me on the tennis court.

In a sane society, would the men in fhat photograph be let in anywhere? But in our society they are treated respectfully, as people who care deeply about an important cause. In our society, traditionalist conservatives are non-persons, but men who march in high-heeled shoes to protest the oppression of women are seen as making a noteworthy contribution to the human good.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 15, 2012 01:26 PM | Send