One of my blog post categories is "Collapse of the West." (See the column on the right side of this blog for other categories). I think what L. Brent Bozell III reports fits that category. He begins his article by saying,
Daniel Bergner isn’t the devil’s advocate, but he is a pervert’s apologist. This author and contributor to the New York Times Magazine has a new book titled "The Other Side of Desire," which argues it is unfair to judge bizarre, harmful, and disgusting sexual attractions as bizarre, harmful, and disgusting.
Bozell says further,
It’s natural that a New York Times contributor would draw praise in the New York Times Book Review,
but the reviewer, National Public Radio commentator Lori Gottlieb, went
beyond the call of duty in her February 8 piece. She aggressively
touted Bergner’s literary and journalistic gifts, then took up the
banner of his libertine crusade to blur all lines between the decent
and the repulsive. [my emphasis]
Me: And that's my cue for categorizing this book and its favorable reception as yet another sign of the "collapse of the West." When a culture can't distinguish between "the decent and the repulsive," it is done for, barring some sort of supernatural Christian revival. "Repulsive" is a word one rarely hears. It's a good, strong word that needs to find its way back into appropriate usage.
- After posting the material above, I came across a symposium, "Islamic Terror and Sexual Mutilation," which expands the discussion of "repulsive"considerably. It probably deserves a separate blog post, but I'll just note the symposium for now.
During the horrifying siege of the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Islamic terrorists sexually humiliated and mutilated
the guests before shooting them dead. Why? Frontpage has assembled a
distinguished panel to discuss this question with us today.