Fasten your safety belts, we're going highbrow. A really well-done thoughtful (and thought-creating) article by John Derbyshire on NRO, saying that the more we dissect, concentrate on, and analyze habits, mores, and institutions the greater dangers and crises we create. He says this in connection to the current debate on marriage and possible federal recognition and protection thereof, mentioning the Scottish philosopher David Hume in the process.

Hume and other skeptical conservatives (Burke, Maistre, Stephen, Mallock, for example) were inherently drawn toward deconstructing existence but ultimately pulled back and saw that many of the good and true parts of our lives would not stand up to the rigor of logic and analysis. This is not a weakness on the part of our institutions (aren't things that serve a purpose, and prove their usefulness over time by making life livable and lovable, good, no matter their logical foundations?) but a weakness on our parts, that we cannot resist the temptation to aim the barrel of our minds against society and taste the fruit from the tree of knowledge. So, even though marriage is an impressive social/historical institution that has lasted centuries by proving its worth, in just a few years time, by applying our minds and thinking what marriage means in theory, we can destroy it and make it look silly and illogical. Maybe, says Derbyshire, we are thinking too much (that is always possible, even in a society that errs too much in the other direction). Maybe federal protection of marriage, and all the attention and analysis that will bring, will hurt more than help much like governmental protection of Christianity has killed religion in Europe by focusing people's attention on it (Charles Murray's point).

Of course this is a gamble. Do you take the optimistic stand, based on history (God bless), that marriage is stronger than you think because it serves a social purpose, people will realize this over time, stop analyzing and legislating on it, and it will survive stronger than ever? Or do you take the pessimistic stand, that unless we do something, the deconstructors will tear marriage down so that it means everything to everybody, and hence nothing?

I don't solve problems, I only create them.