Some of us are boundary-patrollers, and some of us are boundary-trespassers (and some of us just don’t think much about boundaries, one way or the other).
I can be frantic when it comes to personal boundaries. Yes, I share some pretty personal stuff on this blog, but there’s a lot (mostly boring, I must say), that I don’t care to share and, really, the crucial issue is whether or not I have the choice of what to reveal.
But when it comes to partisan issues, man, I am not at all interested in boundary patrol. I might think you’re a shitty leftist if you’re anti-union or not much of a feminist if you support anti-abortion legislation, but beyond that not-at-all-enforceable judgement, well, I’m not going to try to enforce anything.
It’s not that boundary-patrol isn’t necessary—it helps to be able to distinguish between x and not-x—but that I don’t think it necessary for me to engage in it. Hell, I’ll help to set up those boundaries—I’m pretty happy to draw lines all over the place—but if someone wants to wander across them, I’ll wave ’em through.
In any case, there are more than enough people out there who thrill in shrieking Halt! Who goes there? at the wanderers that I don’t worry about shirking guard duty. Or in trespassing some boundaries m’self.
I don’t know how much of a change this is for me. I could be strident when young and can be strident now, but I don’t know that I ever had much of a passion for cleaning out My Side. Maybe I did and I’ve just forgotten, but I just don’t recall ever taking on the role of Ideological Bouncer.
And I’m in no mood to start now, especially not since embracing the whole messiness thing—smudges and breaks are pretty much unavoidable. Add to that my general sense that if you’re not trying to kill/maim me, you’re not my enemy and, well, it’s no surprise that, absent an emergency, I won’t be (wo)manning the ramparts.
Makes me a pretty shitty militant, I guess (which is probably why I’m not a militant).
Anyway, all of this is a way of sidling up to our latest version of the US Culture Wars: Religion Edition.
Rod Dreher is, predictably, very upset by the rough beast of same-sex equality slouching toward Bethlehem: there are lines in Christianity and barricades in morality which simply must not be crossed, and woe the blood-dimmed tide about to be unloosed upon the land.
(You think I’m exaggerating? I am not.)
Not a few of his commenters think he’s hysterical, but what they miss is that Rod is a boundary-patroller. He’s the guy on the wall or in the bell-tower trying to protect against the hordes and to rouse his fellows—of course he’s going to be screaming all of the time.
I think he’s wrong, of course, but he’s playing a role on the right as surely as the p.c. folk are playing on the left—which means that, if I am (however grudgingly) to accept the good that may come from left-patrollers, I ought to extend that same (grudging) legitimacy to a right-patroller.
Even as I sigh and roll my eyes.
AbsurdBeats 