Walking the dogs (www.homefromhomeservices.co.uk).
by Steve Timmer
Aug 25, 2013, 4:00 PM

Dogs are eating the dogfood

That is intended for our seniors

Okay, that’s a bit of a paraphrase, but not much. Based on intertubal inflammation about Katherine Kersten’s latest commentary in the Strib, it isn’t really necessary for me to write anything more about it. Just consider it a keeping limber exercise by me.

Based on her keen observation of people walking dogs, and not children, past her house, Kersten concludes that we’ve become misanthropes, favoring our pooches to people.

An equally valid inference, of course, is that Kersten lives in a neighborhood full of old people who don’t have any kids. And they’re trying to stay fit. But it seems so sinister, doesn’t it, Katie?

Ask yourself, Katie, do you ever walk in your neighborhood with children?

But then, and here’s the really good part: after the usual dab of personal observation, Kersten winds up with this:

The founders [sic, should be Founders in a Kersten piece] believed that human beings have a unique dignity and an elevated status over all other animals, because they are made in the image of God and are capable of choosing between good and evil. Our nation’s political system is founded on this view of human beings’ unique moral status.

Our society still pays lip service to the Declaration of Independence and its vision of human rights and equality. But we increasingly reject the Judeo-Christian framework that undergirds it in favor of scientific materialism, which views the universe as a mindless swirl of matter and energy and reserves no special place for human beings.

In the social realm, the corollary of scientific materialism is moral relativism. Relativism teaches that since there is no universal truth or higher good, every individual must choose what’s “true” for him or her. The goal of life is simply to be “happy,” however we define it. In deciding how to live, we must be guided by our personal preferences and tastes.

Even I didn’t see that coming. I knew that recycling caused moral decay, but I had no idea that walking the dog did.

There is nothing — nothing — from which the Mistress of Troubling Signs cannot infer the rejection of the Christians, and their friends the Judeos (gotta keep the boss Pearlstein happy), and their entire framework.

Remember, kids, it says in the Declaration of Independence that all white men are created equal, but not women, non-whites, or dogs.

Update: Kevin Hoffman did a Google search — something that is often fatal to Kersten commentary – and discovered, as is often the case, the codswallop is predigested for her.

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