I just saw this thing on The Colbert Report about this guy named Albert Mohler who said basically the same thing I said in an earlier post, that we may someday have the ability to technologically remove any biological predisposition to homosexuality.
Mohler took a lot of heat for advocating such a practice, but would it really be that objectionable? I am in favour of gay rights, because I don't think whom you find attractive is as important as your ability to pursue a relationship with whomever may consent to have a relationship with you. I therefore think it would be far more preferable for a parent to remove biological urges for relations with the same sex than to force them to fit into some lifestyle that is not compatible with their biology.
So I don't have a problem with parents biologically inducing heterosexuality in their children, and I don't have a problem with parent's who choose to do the opposite.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Jeffersonian Democracy
One might be surprised by the fact that Thomas Jefferson had a hand in writing the US Constitution considering his advocacy of aristocracy and social stratification in a letter he wrote to John Adams.
The constitution does say that "all men are created equal," but does this really conflict with the idea of social stratification? Does the idea that all men are created equal mean that all men end up equal or should be treated equally? I don't think that that is what Jefferson believed. He believed that "there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents." He also said that "There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents." By this he means the traditional European concept of hereditary aristocracy.
I can't speak for everyone who had a hand in writing the constitution, but this seems to me to be evidence that Jefferson believed that equality of creation meant not that everyone should be treated equally, but rather that your status should be based rather on "virtue and talents" not the circumstances under which you were "created."
Jefferson considered the natural aristocracy, "the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society" and asks, "May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?"
Too bad that's not the kind of government the United states has now.
The constitution does say that "all men are created equal," but does this really conflict with the idea of social stratification? Does the idea that all men are created equal mean that all men end up equal or should be treated equally? I don't think that that is what Jefferson believed. He believed that "there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents." He also said that "There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents." By this he means the traditional European concept of hereditary aristocracy.
I can't speak for everyone who had a hand in writing the constitution, but this seems to me to be evidence that Jefferson believed that equality of creation meant not that everyone should be treated equally, but rather that your status should be based rather on "virtue and talents" not the circumstances under which you were "created."
Jefferson considered the natural aristocracy, "the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society" and asks, "May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?"
Too bad that's not the kind of government the United states has now.
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