The editorial makes reference to a “survey conducted by the
Office of Legislative Management" that shows – again I am quoting from the
editorial – “Eighty six people who work in the state’s General Assembly said a
legislator had sexually harassed them in a way that created a hostile work
environment. Another 15 [per cent] said the harassment involved a quid pro quo
for sexual conduct.”
They should not have been astonished, because editorial page
editors are grown-ups who should understand that Eros is no respecter of
ideologies. Both conservatives and progressives sometimes yield to what moral
philosophers used to call the “sins of the flesh.” In our secular age, we’ve
abandoned the whole notion of sin, partly because it is a religious concept,
and progressives have progressed far beyond the boundaries of outworn religious
doctrine, which they find illiberal and inhibiting. Harvard and Yale may still
have chairs in moral philosophy, but the current science is not what it was
when the subject was attached by a pedagogical umbilical cord to theology, once
known as the queen of the sciences. In any case, most editorials are not
written by moral philosophers.
Progressives are not more saintly than conservatives.
Central to the mini explosion that set off the #metoo
movement were the moral delinquencies of Harvey Weinstein. It would not be a
stretch to call Weinstein a progressive; certainly his filmography, when it was
not pornographic, carried progressive messages.
Weinstein’s ethics and his view of morality can properly be
traced to the Marquis de Sade’s
libertine novels, rather than, say, Augustine’s Confessions. Libertinism is absolute, unrestrained liberty
in matters of sex and morals as understood by Augustine and
Jeremiah, two reputable ethicists. The Marquis
de Sade was its high priest, Weinstein its altar boy. Neither of the two
can properly be described as conservative.
De Sade, an aristocrat in rebellion against the French
aristocracy, which prudently locked him up in the Bastille, was not a
conservative in any sense; nor was Weinstein or, to pick another moral
reprobate, former Democrat congressman in New York's 9th congressional district
Anthony Weiner, given to sending pictures of his unmentionables to young women
he knew only through the internet. Weiner, drummed out of politics by morally
outraged women and men – including not a few old, white men – was the husband of
Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and
vice chair of her 2016 campaign for President of the United States. Hollywood
is full of libertines. Only a few twinkling Hollywood stars, huddling together
in dark corners, are conservatives.
In this one respect conservatives may be more sinned against
than sinning. Traditional morality lies at the center of conservativism, which
itself has religious roots. This is not to say there are no conservative
deviants. When they depart from their roots, conservatives tend to stink more
than progressives for reasons stately eloquently by C. S. Lewis. Drawing from a
Shakespeare sonnet, Lewis tells us “Lilies that fester smell far worse than
weeds." It’s a good rather than a bad thing that progressive moral
reprobates still astonish editorial writers. Astonishment, related to wonder,
is at the center of moral philosophy. One who cannot be astonished by moral
evil cannot be moral. There really is such a thing as the moral sense, and
those who abandon it fall precipitously into moral nonsense.
We have abandoned a theological language, the language of
sin and redemption, preferring instead the language of pseudo-science and
psychology to map out our ethical infrastructure, and the language does not fit
the reality of our existence. Among progressives, the progressive cult is
related to ethics pretty much in the way fish are related to milk; the
connection between the two, if there is any connection at all, is remote and incidental.
Progressivism has become a breastplate to spare self-righteous progressives from ethical assaults; hence the astonishment of the
Courant’s editorial board editors. How in God’s name can a progressive who
favors, say, partial birth abortion, violence in answer to rational debate and
fish in their milk possibly molest women?
Why affect surprise at this? There is no salvation from sin,
the ruination of the soul, by way of astonishment. Even de Sade knew that.
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