Gay Marriage and Post Modern Debate in America

This Post continued from here.

I acknowledge that in all of this I have not addressed the substantive issue as to whether Gay Marriage should be legally recognized. That is because with the Ignorati Class at the helm of our Republic today it is important to clear away the flotsam and jetsam of public discourse.

Where as now the Ignorati Class dominates society, the popular conception is that a resolution of problems occurs after debate when the contending parties come to a unanimous agreement. Armed with this silly idea, the result of public debate can only be what Dreher describes: a bitterly divisive people constantly haranguing each other, producing a "shrillness of contemporary public debate."

So, to recap, what is the real role of debate and voting in our system? We must all understand first that we are a constitutional Republic, not a debating society. In a properly ordered society reasoned and respectful debate forms an important ground for the expression of fundamental American values and the resolution of problems between people. But unanimous agreement between all parties is not the goal of public debate, nor is it desirable. We seek consensus to public questions, not monolithic agreement.

But we also seek finality to public controversies. How does a constitutional Republic reconcile its desire for consensus agreement with finality on any given issue? By voting. When debate has run its course we the people put the issue to a vote. Thereafter, everyone is supposed to move on to other issues or to their own private affairs.

For the Ignorati Class, debate continues forever until the mythical point of unanimous agreement occurs. It's all politics all the time, and only divisiveness and shrillness can ensue. To the simple educated citizen of a constitutional Republic, it's politics sometimes and then the pursuit of our own personal happiness most of the time.

As an aside, I think this points to what the electorate was saying this past election season when all the polls indicated a desire for an end to the divisiveness in politics. Whether they knew it or not, the people actually wanted an end to all politics all the time, for a finality to the acrimonious public debate on so many public controversies so that they could return to the real stuff of life. Back in the lead-up to the elections of 1920 Warren Harding called a similar public desire a need for a return to “normalcy” after the dominating war footing the country had lived under Woodrow Wilson’s progressive administration.

But in any case, now that I have clarified to everyone’s satisfaction the place of debate and voting in our society, in my next Post I will address the rather straight forward substantive issues on the legalization of Gay Marriage.

To be continued ...