I was pondering whether to post about another entry at “The Ethicist” which may have been prompted by the weirdest question Prof Appiah has chosen to answer yet. I would have been tempted to answer it, “Yikes! This isn’t a question for an ethicist, it’s a question for a psychiatrist!” but in light of the lively discussion about marriage as an institution flagged by the previous post, maybe the commentariate will have a more constructive response. “The Ethicist’s” typically prolix answer is here.

The question from Name Withheld, a horny post-menopausal wife, headlined, “I’m Happily Married. I Just Want to Sleep With Another Man Before I Die”:

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The discussion about the institution of marriage on last Friday’s Open Forum was so excellent—EA at its best—that it seems unfair to highlight a single entry in it above the rest. It began with Bad Bob’s observations about his daughter asserting that marriage was outdated and unnecessary in our wise and modern age. (I mostly avoided this debate, hard as it was for me when the sudden loss of a marriage dominated my life in 2024 and so far this year as well).

What followed was a fascinating discourse among BB, Michael West, Ryan Harkins (this topic is in his wheelhouse), Humble Talent, Old Bill and Demeter, but it was Chris Marschner’s contribution, in response to Humble Talent’s comment, that I have chosen to represent the thread. (Bad Bob nominated it for COTD in an email to me, and as the initiator of the discussion, his pointer carried weight.)

The Humble Talent comment that was predicate to the Comment of the Day (he begins with a quote from Bad Bob’s initial comment regarding his daughter’s argument):

BAD BOB: “I think that’s wrong on it’s face, but if society were to embrace that sort of thing, wouldn’t we have to do away with a few ethical concepts? Loyalty comes to mind, the Golden rule, and I’m sure quite a few others would need definitions changed?”

None of the above. I had the benefit, at 18, of being put in charge of a staff that included a 60 year old grandmother. Gina was weird; proudly Christian, and professionally raided in Guild Wars…. Which isn’t per se a contradiction in terms, but was kind of unique. I loved our conversations.

One of which I remember talking to her about how people, even back then, had sex before marriage, and how she didn’t understand how any relationship could have trust unless two virgins found themselves for the first time.

The answer, to me, was obvious: Why wouldn’t you trust them? Where’s the lie? Now… She was thoughtful enough to lean back and have a think on that, because that’s who she was, and didn’t necessarily like it, or agree with it, but she accepted the truth of it: There’s no betrayal if there’s no lie.

There are cultural differences in play here, and realities that people your age grew up with are fundamentally different now, and it’s hard to wrap your head around them.

Religious beliefs, at least pre-Lutheran, tended to evolve over time to fit the realities of life: At the times the food prohibitions were active, those foods were almost as likely to make you ill as to nourish you, and by the time Jesus told the masses they could suck back pork and shellfish without sin, sanitation improvements had made those foods relatively safe.

We aren’t living in times where humanity or the faith teeters on the brink of extinction from external existential threats. It’s not important, and in fact, it’s probably not great, for the average family to have ten kids anymore. Sex doesn’t carry the risk of pregnancy that it used to. Sexual disease is significantly less common and much more preventable and treatable. I honestly wonder if, had condoms and penicillin been discovered before the printing press, whether the teachings of Jesus wouldn’t have broadly laxed the sex laws.

Here is Chris Marschner’s response:

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Shortly after the news that gun-obsessed ideologue David Hogg had been elected one of the Vice-Chairs of the Democratic National Committee (Item #7 in this post), a Hogg tweet from 2022 was rediscovered:

What is he, 14? This is the kind of mature, nation-building, rational leadership Democrats are turning to in their dark night of the soul. To call those sentiments infantile, self-centered, irresponsible and incompetent would be an understatement. What does one call a political party that looks at that and concludes, “Hey! This guy is just what we need!”?

The Democrats, I guess. Wow.

Asked by Jake Tapper this morning why his crumbling party is so unpopular, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, who was one of the Democrats who made his party look sick and vicious during the confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, defaulted to “It’s the economy, stupid!”

No, Senator: It’s the terrible ideas, incompetent management and repellent personalities, stupid. Like David Hogg.

What we are witnessing with the Trump tsunami of executive orders and direct assaults on the Deep State is the creation of a new norm, one that, now that I think about it, should have manifested itself long ago. Note that I didn’t refer to the current wave of orders and directives coming out of the White House as a “blitzkrieg.” That would just feed into the hysterical narrative from the Axis that an elected U.S. President using his Constitutional powers to manage the Executive Branch is “fascist.” Apparently the Left is going to keep using the “Trump is Hitler” nonsense because it’s worked out so well for them.

A new President from the opposing party obviously has a huge tactical advantage if he moves this quickly and forcefully. The only arriving administration that came close to what Trump has done was Roosevelt’s first term, and he couldn’t move nearly this fast. The phenomenon makes me wonder if there is a previously unrealized advantage to a President taking four years off between terms and calculating what went wrong and how to do better the next time.

Trump is obviously not one to conclude, “This time, I need to think things through before I tweet or open my big yap,” but he clearly figured out that he was sabotaged his entire four years because he naively trusted entrenched government employees to be patriots loyal to their President rather than working behind the scenes to undermine him. Far from being an attack on democracy, Trump’ forceful and essential course correction is a defense of it, and entirely ethical: responsible, fair, and the fulfillment of Trump’s promises.

Good. It isn’t revenge, but it is justice.

Meanwhile…

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