SCATOLOGY VS. LICENSE

The Book of Vices: A review of Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America, by Dan Savage (John B. Kienker, Claremont Review of Books)

[U]nderneath the pretension of sunny, daring, nothing-can-stop-me happiness, chapter after chapter betrays the dank nihilism always driving these sinful Americans, driving them further and further in hopes that they might feel something-anything-in their drifting lives. Whether it's hopeful gamblers (greed); after-work stoners (sloth); 500 lbs.+ women who can no longer walk or wash themselves (gluttony); suburban parents who've traded affection for orgies (lust); or shirtless homosexuals who just want to dance, dance, dance, while their friends die around them (gay pride)-they all need to silence society's judgmental voices before any harsh truths can penetrate the stimulations and distractions with which they've anesthetized themselves.

Even in the final chapter, when Savage himself tries to commit in a single weekend all seven deadly sins, he does so with all the gusto of a contractual obligation to his publisher. And his odyssey culminates not in heady abandon or self-actualization, but in a wince-inducing scene of his own subjection to insult and humiliation from a bullying gigolo.

Savage's feeble caricature of the American founding might be easier to shrug off if it weren't so familiar. As he rightly points out, many conservatives-particularly traditionalists and those who see the American regime as low but solid-have bought into the myth that the founders infected America with the freedom "to go your own way," that "[o]ur bodies and minds and souls are our own, and we should be free to use and abuse and dispose of them as we see fit." Conservatives just don't celebrate this sentiment the way liberals and libertarians do.

But the same Thomas Jefferson who articulated the right to pursue happiness also said that we are "free from all but the moral law." He counseled that "[h]ealth, learning and virtue will insure your happiness," and in his Notes on the State of Virginia endorsed strict penalties for, among other things, the crime of sodomy. This connection between virtue and happiness is the real expression of the American mind, and of a liberty distinct from license.

Despite Dan Savage's wishful thinking, if the author of the Declaration were to return today, upon seeing this supposed "love letter to Thomas Jefferson" he would surely file for a restraining order, or at least a change of address.

Thereby proving two of the arguments below. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 22, 2003 11:23 AM