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Rambling

Great podcast at Econtalk: Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet Union, and In the First Circle. Econtalk is starting a reader's club and In the First Circle is the first book. The podcast is so good, I'm tempted to join the club, but I know I'd never keep up with the reading. I fear my days of reading long Russian novels are behind me.

Freakin' Detroit Lions. Whatta circus Monday night. But I'm actually fine with it. If the Lions got good, I'd feel compelled to watch professional football, and I really don't want to, especially since they're using more and more female announcers. The incongruity of listening to a woman announce a man's game, it's grating for reasons I can't precisely put my finger on. It's kind of like the bilingual Mass. I detest it with a passion . . . but I can't articulate why.

Two of my boys go to Eastern Michigan University, whose football team just beat Purdue. Making its way around Ypsilanti: #wewantbama.

EMU, incidentally, was the alma mater of the great Joe Sobran. He left National Review and this earth far too soon.

Random Blurb from the Notebooks: Written twelve years ago:

The advocates of laws that give people freedom from reality don't just want that freedom for themselves. I, after all, can wear my wife's underwear and weep while watching the Soap Opera channel. I don't need a new law for that. I just need my own apartment.
But if I want to force the rest of society to say (without mockery), “That's a nice bra you're wearing today, Mr. Scheske,” I need a rule change. Without it, societal attitudes don't change, with the result that someone might think I'm a freak.
It's all related to the gay marriage debate, if you haven't figured it out. It isn't about civil rights or freedom. It's about forcing the rest of society to accept the freedom from reality that you desire. It would be like a drunk demanding that the rest of society honor his drinking problem. “Whatta grand thing that Mr. Fields drank so much at the bar that now he's staggering down main street with little command of his bodily fluids. If he wants to get that drunk, people shouldn't snicker at him.”
The folks who want gay marriage don't want it for themselves. They want it for the rest of society. They want everyone to say, “Whatta grand thing that Chuck and Bob are having relations.” They don't want the inconvenience of society (or reality) saying, “Marriage is by nature man and woman.” They want freedom from that reality, and they want the rest of us to go along with the farce.
It makes me kinda wonder. All the sexual civil rights stuff started with the privacy mantra: “What two consenting adults do in their own bedroom is their own business.” Privacy this, privacy that. It had a ring to it that Americans intuitively sympathize with.
But it didn't take long before the privacy theme got translated into a public one. The gays didn't just want privacy. They wanted public affirmation of their gayness. And now the “transgender” folks don't want to wear women's clothing in private. They want to wear it in public, and they want everyone to say it's cool.
It makes me think that what happens in private doesn't stay private, just as what happens in Vegas doesn't really stay in Vegas. The rest of society eventually pays for all that sinning, regardless of where it takes place.

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