The Other McCain

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‘Equality’ and the Loss of Decency

Posted on | July 23, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

Maria Hernandez at Victory Girls notices that feminists are now complaining that men are being ostentatiously rude, i.e., failing to yield their seats to pregnant women on public transportation.

In the years when I routinely rode the Metro to work in D.C., I was rather astonished by the lack of courtesy. The way I was raised, no man should be seated, as long as any woman was standing. Customary deference to the fair sex — holding the door open for ladies, etc. — was habitual, something every Southern boy used to be taught from childhood, a matter of personal honor, so that I felt a sense of regret and shame when I occasionally forgot my manners and offended a woman. Of course, feminists are so easily offended that merely to exist as a male is a sin in their sight, and Rule Five turned this into a sport.

Feminism is a menace to everything good and wholesome in human life, and I make no apologies for treating feminists as earthly agents of Satan, but good and decent women should not suffer on their account.

The problem is that “equality” destroys the basis of social order. Edmund Burke prophetically warned of this in the French Revolution:

“It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles, and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. . . . I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. . . .
“The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!”

To whom is deference owed? What can be the basis of courtesy, if there is no recognized social hierarchy? What honor can there be in behaving like a gentleman, if women refuse to behave like ladies? Under the regime of “equality,” life becomes a scramble for advantage, a relentless power struggle — as Hobbes said, “the war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes) — and this competition makes cooperation impossible.

Antifa thugs riot to prevent campus speeches by anyone they disagree with, Maxine Waters calls for mobs to harass Republicans in public, and then feminists wonder why men are behaving so rudely?

It is our duty to future generations to resist these latter-day Jacobins and their destructive schemes of “equality.” If anything of grace and courtesy is to survive in our society, we must raise our children to be polite, but we must also teach them to oppose the forces of the Cultural Left, which are implacably hostile to the gracious and courteous life.

(Hat-tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

 

Category: Sex Trouble

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One Response to “‘Equality’ and the Loss of Decency”

  1. News of the Week (July 29th, 2018) | The Political Hat
    July 29th, 2018 @ 11:22 am

    […] “Equality” and the Loss of Decency Maria Hernandez at Victory Girls notices that feminists are now complaining that men are being ostentatiously rude, i.e., failing to yield their seats to pregnant women on public transportation. […]