Surprising Help From Secular America
Coulter on ‘Faggot’ Easy to Defend
By Rick Pearcey
Tuesday, March 6, 2007 -- Ann Coulter used the word “faggot” the other day in comments regarding Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
Here’s what she said March 2 at a conference for conservatives: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I'm -- so, kind of at an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards, so I think I'll just conclude here and take your questions."
The Edwards people and others have responded with outrage. The official John Edwards ’08 website released the following statement from the senator: “Ann Coulter’s use of an anti-gay slur yesterday was un-American and indefensible. In America, we strive for equality and embrace diversity. The kind of hateful language she used has no place in political debate or our society at large.”
The preference, of course, is not to offend. But it is easy to defend what Coulter said, and the tools with which to do so are available on the nightly news, college campus, and in the elite neighborhoods of secular America. Against such implements, “equality” and “diversity” face no small challenge.
Male Logic
Feminist theory, for example, might defend the “faggot” statement by condemning the use of male logic against a strong female woman. In the old pre-modern days of “male logic,” people used to think opposites were opposite. “A is not non-A” was the oppressive mantra. “Male” was actually thought the opposite of “female,” and “man” a true diversity to “woman.”
But now everyone knows gender is a free-floating social construction allowing a diversity of contemporary expressions. Only citizens of the Dark Ages or Fox News think in terms of Man vs. Woman. The world is rid of patriarchal logic and its imposed, constricted choices. The new dawn of liberty of course applies to the use of the word “faggot.” Any forward-thinking feminist ought to be able to tell you that waxing hysterical about “faggot” (as opposed to “non-faggot”) as a slur (as opposed to a non-slur) buys into that tyranny of outdated male logic which is unaware that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
Darwin
Beyond this, evolutionists have their input. They can point out that it is scientifically impossible for Coulter to have crossed any real “line” of discourse in polite society, because, actually, there are no such real lines to cross. Speech that is hateful and speech that is not hateful may appear to be morally opposite, but (as with apparent design in nature) this is a matter of surface realities only. As with all things in a Darwinian universe, existence is ultimately a single continuous amoral-ontological-scientific flow from nothingness to amoeba to Einstein to the empty impersonal expanse of space -- and back again. There is a difference in degree but not in kind between “faggot” and “non-faggot.” So relax when listening to Ann. All is one.
We’re not done with Darwin yet. For even if evolutionists (inconsistently) allow “hate” to emerge miraculously as a morally distinct and valid phenomenon, it therefore must have had survival value for humanity. In this case, to reject even “hate” may be trifling with Mother Nature, not to mention breaking faith with Father Darwin. Beyond this, it’s even possible that condemning the likes of a Coulter may inhibit evolution’s latest punctuated effort to advance humanity up the chain of being. Who really knows what in the future will have had survival value in the present? Let’s not be narrow-minded in our struggle for survival. Perhaps the “faggot” phenomenon is part of a cosmic move to help humanity adapt, improvise, and overcome some future challenge. And let us bravely ask: What might this have to do with global warming?
Camus and Sartre
Existentialists realize that all choices are morally neutral, that there is no human nature to predefine the inner life of any complex organization of sensibilities and particles of humanity knitted together under the skin of a conference speaker. The existence of Ann precedes the essence of Coulter. Camus has endowed Coulter with the power and authority to create herself out of nothing every day before any crowd, moment by moment, politics by politics, poll by poll, joke by joke. Who are we -- in an unnamed boat in a dark night on a meaningless sea -- to impose our crypto-neo-blatant fascist politico-social norms on her right to free expression? Sartre must be turning over in his café.
Material Girl
Materialists redefine man as a soulless machine (wives excepted), determined by mechanical laws, possessing a “mind” that really is just so much meat on the top of our necks. Ann was predestined from the first cosmic burp to utter those lines that riled up editors, politicians, and other machines across the universe a few days ago. But mechanistic Ann should not be faulted.
How can there be anything special about the material girl? How can a machine be held responsible for employing “hate” language in a speech, as is claimed? Did she plug herself in? Who do these other machines who object think they are? And “hate”? Apart from PCs vs. Macs, “hate” as a moral phenomenon is an alien concept in a mechanistic universe. A purely material cosmos couldn’t care less whether the Coulter entity was mean or joking or both. Hate and love as meaningful moral categories are equally dead for materialistic girls and progressive media watchers. All that’s left is bare diversity with no clue about strength or weakness. If a Jay Leno happens to care about the humor status of the Coulter effort, it just means the comic is out of line with the cosmos. He needs metaphysical rehab. Bloggers at war with Ann should throw their computers out of the windows and ask the universe to forgive their false consciousness.
Relativistic Hoosegow
Relativists have much to say, of course. They’re constantly telling us there are no moral boundaries to cross. I’m OK, you stink, but nobody cares. In such a setting there is no basis for moral outrage regarding a “slur,” whatever those four letters stuck together are supposed to mean. Relativism erases ethical distinctions in the use of language. You’re a liar! Adulterer! Republican! Zzzzzzzzz.
Maybe Ann is leading the way in exposing the ongoing presence and enslavement of pre-modern, absolutistic thoughtforms. Even today, denials against relativism are jotted down as equality-denying sins against the Holy Secular Spirit. This is why relativists in states such as Cuba and the erstwhile USSR have thrown uppity humans into the people’s hoosegow. When not in power, relativists seem to find a measure of fulfillment in casting stiff-necked people into political Hades for unorthodox speech in public settings.
Blonde Genes
Meanwhile, homosexual activists had better hope scientists do not discover a gene that predisposes people to utter the word “faggot,” lest wordsmiths claim their tongues were born that way. In a gene-driven universe, “what is” simply “is” without any moral qualifier (except to submit to your genes at any and every amorous opportunity). In a universe where genes are king, there really is no point in worrying about “oppression” from so-called homophobic blondes. Talking blondes have genes, too, and genes do not discriminate regarding speech content and moral outcomes. Enlightened biology is value-free and requires the separation of ethics from science.
Words matter. Again, the preference is not to offend (though, at times, it may be appropriate), but neither should one cower before ideological bullies or before alien, anti-human philosophies. These should be resisted and defeated. John Edwards seems not to know that words like “equality” and “diversity” are no match for the secular terrors that roam the land.
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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report.
