Sometimes, the most historic news stories are not on the front
page but way at the posterior of the news. This week that was so.
American Liberalism, the country's chief source of endless reform,
has suffered a catastrophic setback. For years the Liberals have
been bringing down upon us endless moral and political improvements
-- to say nothing of inconveniences and lost freedoms. They have
visited upon us environmentalism, and consumerism, and, more
recently, the anti-gun movement. If you have an ear for such
things, doubtless you have apprehended renewed steam in the
animal-rights movement. Vegetarianism is being pushed in schools
and universities, where leafy repasts are being offered in the
place of red meat and gravy. There also appears to be growing
Liberal anxiety over coffee and cola.
Another of Liberalism's rising reforms -- a rather disgusting
one, I might add -- has been the Anti-Circumcision Movement (ACM).
Well, this week it suffered a setback.
Again one had to read further back into the daily newspapers for
this one, but it has been worth it. Laura Johannes writes, deep in
the interior of the Wall Street Journal, that "Women whose
sexual partners are circumcised have less chance of getting
cervical cancer than those whose partners haven't had the
surgery…." She cites findings just published in that Liberal
house organ, the New England Journal of Medicine, "that
uncircumcised men are more likely to harbor human papilloma virus."
No small thing that, for though "papilloma" sounds like the name of
a lovely Mediterranean resort or a very romantic song sung by a
Brazilian bossa nova group; it actually is "a sexually transmitted
virus…believed to cause nearly all cervical cancer."
So where does that leave the heralds of ACM? If I read the
Nation magazine correctly, and follow the sages on
National Public Radio perceptively, the movement against
circumcision was destined to become as strong as the anti-tobacco
movement. But now we know. An uncircumcised penis is infinitely
more deadly than a Marlboro. Are the Liberals going to continue to
disparage a surgical movement that goes back to Biblical times? Are
they going to promote cervical cancer, all for the joy of
disturbing the settled custom of circumcision?
I predict they will. Remember my finding, arrived at after
studying the Liberal mind for a generation. The only enduring
political value that Liberals adhere to is neither freedom nor
order, but that very peculiar political value: disturbing the
peace. Liberals will in growing numbers promote their
Anti-Circumcision Movement because it disturbs settled customs. But
they will call for increased federal funding for the cure of
cervical cancer. That brings up another interesting aspect of
American Liberalism, to wit, having it both ways.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is editor in chief of The
American Spectator and a contributing editor of the New York
Sun.
topics:
Environment
