YOU DON'T HAVE A RIGHT TO PRIVACY, BUT AN OBLIGATION TO IT:

Infidelity: in spite of everything, we still care: There is an encouraging lesson in the public reaction to the Tiger Woods scandal. (John Robson, 18 December 2009, MercatorNet)

What strikes me about this mess, and encourages me, is that even in this liberated age, the overall result of the scandal has been revulsion. In 2005 I began a newspaper column with, “As the narrator of Russell Kirk’s ghost story The Invasion of the Church of the Holy Ghost wanders the sordid main drag of his decaying parish, a neon sign above a stripper bar flashes ‘Stark Naked or Your Money Back’. What a slogan for our times.” I still think so. But the short version of the Tiger Woods business is, “Stark Naked and our Money Back.” As it should be.

From golfing fans to the general public and to Mr. Woods’ commercial sponsors, the general reaction has not been to excuse or diminish his conduct but “Ugh, get away from me.” The mass of humanity in the West has, it appears, managed to resist the siren song of sexual modernity far better than we had feared.

The metaphysics of modernity was expressed very nicely by Malcolm Muggeridge in 1966 when he said, “Sex is the mysticism of materialism. We are to die in the spirit to be reborn in the flesh, rather than the other way around.” It was obvious from the start to many people that this plan was fatally flawed. But it is nice to see that most normal people’s reaction to Tiger Woods is that, after 50 years letting it all hang out, we would like to see much of it get tucked back in. [...]

Certainly, in the aftermath, even those of us unlikely to romp to victory in our first Masters are usefully reminded that managing to stagger along the straight and narrow path matters more than any other achievement mundane or spectacular.