Love is a four-letter word but you don’t hear it nearly as often as you hear some other four-letter words. It
may be a sign of our times that everyone seems to be talking openly about sex but we seem to be
embarrassed to talk about love.
Sex alone will not even reproduce the human race because babies cannot survive the first week of life
without incredible amounts of care. That care comes from love. If the parents are too wretched to give the
infant the attention he needs, then a general love of babies must lead others to set up some backup
system, so that the child does not die of neglect.
The shallow people who have turned our schools into propaganda centers for the counterculture try hard
to take love out of human relations. Between men and women, for example, there is just sex, if you
believe the clever anointed.
But why should we believe them? Why have there been such painful laments—in letters, literature, poetry
and song—for so many centuries about the breakup of love affairs? Because there are no other members
of the opposite sex available? Not at all.
Sex is almost always available, if only commercially. But love is a lot harder to find. Some people do not
even try after their loved one is gone. Some give up on life itself.
In short, what millions of people have done for hundreds of years gives the lie to the self-important cynics
who want to reduce everything to an animal level.
Actually, many animals behave in ways which suggest that love is important to them, not only among their
own species but also with human beings. Stories of dogs who have rescued or defended their owners,
even at the cost of their lives, go back for centuries.
Why is love so out of fashion with the intelligentsia and others who are striving to be “with it”?
Love is one of those bonds which enable people to function and societies to flourish—without being
directed from above. Love is one of the many ways we influence each other and work out our inter
related lives without the help of the anointed. Like morality, loyalty, honesty, respect, and other immaterial
things, love is one of the intangibles without which the tangibles won’t work.
Intellectuals are not comfortable with that. They want to be able to reduce everything to something
material, predictable and—above all—controllable. Many want to be in charge of our lives, not have us to
work things out among ourselves, whether through emotional ties or the interactions of the marketplace.
Another four-letter word that has fallen out of favor is “duty.” It has not been banned. It has just been
buried under tons of discussions of “rights.” The two words used to be linked, but not any more.
In the real world, however, rights and duties are as closely tied as ever. If A has a right to something, then
B has a duty to see that he gets it. Otherwise A has no such right.
When it is a right to freedom of speech, then it is the duty of judges to stop the government from shutting
him up—or to let him sue if they do. The big problem comes when it is no longer a question of rights to be
left alone but rights to things that other people have to produce. When it is a right to “decent housing,” for
example, that means other people have a duty to produce that housing and supply it to you—whether or
not you are willing to pay what it costs.
Only because the inherent link between rights and duties is broken verbally are advocates for all sorts of
sweeping new rights able to sidestep the question as to why someone else must provide individuals with
what they are unwilling to provide for themselves. The claim is often made or implied that people may be
willing to provide for themselves but are simply unable to do so. But, when push comes to shove, many
of the intelligentsia will admit that it doesn’t matter to them why someone doesn’t have something that he
needs. He has a “right” to it. It also doesn’t matter how someone caught AIDS, he has no duty to avoid it
but others have a duty to pay for it.
What is involved is not just some words but a whole vision of life. If one has the vision of the anointed
who want to control other people’s lives, then all those things which enable us to function independently
of them and of government programs are suspect.
Four-letter words like love, duty, work, and save are hallmarks of people with a very different vision, who
make their own way through life without being part of some grandiose scheme of the anointed or of
government bureaucracies that administer such schemes. No wonder those words are not nearly as
popular as other four-letter words.
-Thomas Sowell
may be a sign of our times that everyone seems to be talking openly about sex but we seem to be
embarrassed to talk about love.
Sex alone will not even reproduce the human race because babies cannot survive the first week of life
without incredible amounts of care. That care comes from love. If the parents are too wretched to give the
infant the attention he needs, then a general love of babies must lead others to set up some backup
system, so that the child does not die of neglect.
The shallow people who have turned our schools into propaganda centers for the counterculture try hard
to take love out of human relations. Between men and women, for example, there is just sex, if you
believe the clever anointed.
But why should we believe them? Why have there been such painful laments—in letters, literature, poetry
and song—for so many centuries about the breakup of love affairs? Because there are no other members
of the opposite sex available? Not at all.
Sex is almost always available, if only commercially. But love is a lot harder to find. Some people do not
even try after their loved one is gone. Some give up on life itself.
In short, what millions of people have done for hundreds of years gives the lie to the self-important cynics
who want to reduce everything to an animal level.
Actually, many animals behave in ways which suggest that love is important to them, not only among their
own species but also with human beings. Stories of dogs who have rescued or defended their owners,
even at the cost of their lives, go back for centuries.
Why is love so out of fashion with the intelligentsia and others who are striving to be “with it”?
Love is one of those bonds which enable people to function and societies to flourish—without being
directed from above. Love is one of the many ways we influence each other and work out our inter
related lives without the help of the anointed. Like morality, loyalty, honesty, respect, and other immaterial
things, love is one of the intangibles without which the tangibles won’t work.
Intellectuals are not comfortable with that. They want to be able to reduce everything to something
material, predictable and—above all—controllable. Many want to be in charge of our lives, not have us to
work things out among ourselves, whether through emotional ties or the interactions of the marketplace.
Another four-letter word that has fallen out of favor is “duty.” It has not been banned. It has just been
buried under tons of discussions of “rights.” The two words used to be linked, but not any more.
In the real world, however, rights and duties are as closely tied as ever. If A has a right to something, then
B has a duty to see that he gets it. Otherwise A has no such right.
When it is a right to freedom of speech, then it is the duty of judges to stop the government from shutting
him up—or to let him sue if they do. The big problem comes when it is no longer a question of rights to be
left alone but rights to things that other people have to produce. When it is a right to “decent housing,” for
example, that means other people have a duty to produce that housing and supply it to you—whether or
not you are willing to pay what it costs.
Only because the inherent link between rights and duties is broken verbally are advocates for all sorts of
sweeping new rights able to sidestep the question as to why someone else must provide individuals with
what they are unwilling to provide for themselves. The claim is often made or implied that people may be
willing to provide for themselves but are simply unable to do so. But, when push comes to shove, many
of the intelligentsia will admit that it doesn’t matter to them why someone doesn’t have something that he
needs. He has a “right” to it. It also doesn’t matter how someone caught AIDS, he has no duty to avoid it
but others have a duty to pay for it.
What is involved is not just some words but a whole vision of life. If one has the vision of the anointed
who want to control other people’s lives, then all those things which enable us to function independently
of them and of government programs are suspect.
Four-letter words like love, duty, work, and save are hallmarks of people with a very different vision, who
make their own way through life without being part of some grandiose scheme of the anointed or of
government bureaucracies that administer such schemes. No wonder those words are not nearly as
popular as other four-letter words.
-Thomas Sowell
