Indecency

Joe Biden recently opined that US VP Mike Pence was “a decent guy.”

Uncle Joe Biden has been around a while. He still has something of the old school in him. Republicans, of course, still talk like that.

But not Democrats. Elizabeth Warren soon found a microphone and challenged him on this. Mike Pence was not a decent guy. Just look at his views on homosexuals. Biden quickly retracted his comment and agreed that Pence was not a decent man.

This is a good measure of how sick our public discourse has become. It was refreshing recently to watch debate in the British House of Commons over Brexit. There the rules still apply, and real discussion takes place. One does not question the integrity of an opponent. One addresses policy, not character. Sadly, it is no longer so even in the Canadian Parliament.

Even if that level of mutual respect were not essential to any honest debate, Mike Pence is indeed, by all accounts, objectively a decent guy. This is a man who will not be alone with any woman other than his wife. His “immoral” views on homosexuality are simply the views of all of the world‘s religions or long-established ethical systems: that it is sinful. Although he believes it should nevertheless be perfectly legal.

So we are at a point at which two high-profile presidential candidates feel comfortable in declaring all religious or conventional ethical beliefs “indecent.” Which is essentially inverting the meaning of that word.

Pence’s position on homosexuality is also the publicly stated position of either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton as of 2008. Apparently everyone was immoral until some time after that date.

Or rather, Warren’s and Biden’s “decency” presumably consists in changing your morality as required to conform to those around you. That’s postmodernism. Reality is constructed on the go by the social consensus. And can otherwise be anything at all. Men can suddenly be women, you can suddenly be Cherokee if it suits you, and pigs might suddenly start to fly. And it then becomes immoral to see or say otherwise.

By this standard, of course, it would have been equally indecent and immoral to object to killing Jews in Nazi Germany, or to slavery in Alabama before 1865. Or to lynching before 1965.

Any way you look at it, this ought to disqualify either Warren or Biden from public office. To begin with, they are clearly objectively immoral. Even if you are too, what then is their function, if they are just going to conform to the views of whoever is around them at the moment? Why pay them the salary? What are they doing for us that an opinion poll couldn’t? And how can we ever predict what they will do in office?