My Quote of The Day 2

Well, this is a long one only because there are really good points that all relate to each other. Take your time reading it- I have to re-read a lot of his writing!

Robert H. Bork "Slouching Towards Gomorrah"
(introduction)

“Emile Durkheim, a founder of sociology, posited that there is a limit to the amount of deviant behavior any community can ‘afford to recognize.’ As behavior worsens, the community adjusts its standards so that conduct once thought reprehensible is no longer deemed so. As behavior improves, the deviancy boundary moves up to encompass conduct previously thought normal. Thus, a community of saints and a community of felons would display very different behavior but about the same amount of recognized deviancy...

“While defining deviancy down with respect to crime, illegitimacy, drug use, and the like, our cultural elites are growing intensely moralistic and disapproving about what had always been thought normal behavior, thus accomplishing what columnist Charles Krauthammer terms, ‘defining deviancy up.’ It is at least an apparent paradox that we are accomplishing both forms of redefining, both down and up, simultaneously...

“Middle-class life is portrayed as oppressive and shot through with pathologies. ‘As part of the vast social project of moral leveling,’ Krauthammer wrote, ‘it is not enough for the deviant to be normalized. The normal must be found to be deviant.’ This situation is thoroughly perverse. Underclass values become increasingly acceptable to the middle class, especially their young, and middle-class values become increasingly contemptible to the cultural elites.”

Aside from realizing how most entertainment glorifies criminals and demonizes police, businessmen and people with any morals, I am sure we can all find real examples where our society has 'defined deviancy down', lowered standards, and chastised the 'good or normal'. Values of the middle-class, the family, and the Christian faith are all seen as not only offensive, but oppressive:

*The typical 'wal-mart mini-van' middle-class family is looked down upon as hicks obsessed with consumerism. (Not to mention the bourgeois 'capitalistic pigs' that run walmart right?)


*In Massachussetts 2005, a man named David Parker was arrested and removed from his kindergartner son's school. Parker objected to his 5 yr old son being indoctrinated with homosexual-tolerance books, but all he did was go to the school and request to be notified before his child recieved such unnecessary and confusing information at the age of 5. The school declined to making this simple agreement and he wouldn't leave the premises until they signed a contract for his modest request. After he was arrested, his house was routinely attacked by gays during "David Parker" rallies, simply because he wanted to be NOTIFIED about what his son was 'learning'.

*Just last week in the Washington state capital of Olympia, atheist groups displayed signs mocking religion next to nativity scenes. Apparently they are offended by the statues depicting Jesus' birth. Here is the sign they put up:
Which would you see as an offensive attack? A few plastic statues huddled in a stable, or a sign declaring that "there are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell"? If they are so confident in that belief, then a plastic baby in a manger shouldn't bother them.
What's next? Are they going to put up signs next to Santa Claus that say "there is no santa claus"??? Oops...I don't wanna give them any ideas...