“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

One of the commentariat in Professor Myers’s blog Pharyngula mentioned a website called Wallbuilders. Woe be onto that person, for they have drawn that pile of drivel to my attention–and now of course I can’t leave it alone.

From the site:

“Presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes with an emphasis on our moral, religious, and constitutional heritage”

Every time I see the terms “moral” and “religious” in juxtaposition, I break out in hives.

One story on the site is entitled “Understanding Illegitimacy”, which is of couse is a misnomer. Bastardy is an antiquated concept that was fostered by the religious powers-that-be to try to keep the faithful (married) “legitimate” and the unfaithful (unmarried) not.

The link takes you to a National Review article by Robert Rector (a golden boy of the Heritage Foundation) that goes on at some length about how marriage and education are the dividing lines delineating a “two-caste system in America”. Among other oddities is

“The disappearance of marriage in low-income communities is the predominant cause of child poverty in the U.S. today. If poor single mothers were married to the fathers of their children, two-thirds of them would not be poor.”

Now if that statement was meant to be an Aristotelian syllogism, it’s fallacious.

One poor human + one poor human + one or more poor children != a not-poor family

Not even in New Math.

Also from Rector:

Most liberal academics regard marriage as an outdated, socially backward institution; they have shed no tears over its demise.

All very interesting, but the attitudes of liberal academics have little or no bearing on what goes on in culture. People aren’t getting married because the people involved choose not to (for better or worse).

Marriage will be around as long as humans are social, but what most conservatives ignore is the fact that “marriage” and “religion” in western culture became synonymous only with the advent of Christianity. Christianity loves the “we’re saved and you’re damned” game, and marriage is just one more of them.