Quote:
Originally Posted by UtahDan
I didn't have any notion of how wounded you were over me calling you boring.
I didn't realize there was anything moral in what I had said. Cowards run away from things. I can with hold judgment and still not want someone making important decisions for me who is the turn their back and run away type.
Nice usage of callow. I keep a thesaurus on my desk as well.
|
I'm not wounded. I just think your point is a tad facile. I'd understand better if you called such a person selfish or callous or even fiendish. But I think it's simplistic and off the mark to generalize about "running away."
For one thing, such a person may be opting for more problems than he or she would have had had he or she stayed in the unhappy marriage. See Anna Karenina. For another, courts of law establish rules for division of marital property, payment of maintenance and child support, and many divorced parents are good parents, sometimes better than they otherwise would have been. Our society does not criminalize ending a marriage for love.
So if all obligations are complied with incident to the divorce decree and order of child support, and the parent who sought the divorce delivered as a parent, I think according to our civic virtue the person did not "run away," however else you may wish to moralize.
Finally, you say you respect someone who apologizes more. What of John Edwards, who, taken at his word, didn't love his extramarital partner and did it only physical gratification? I wonder too how genuine an apology is that has been extracted under such circumstances. He'd probably rather have never been discovered.
How else has John McCain's life shown him to be one who "runs away from his problems"? Spin it any way you please, it's moralizing. Go ahead and moralize, just be forthright about what it is.
I wasn't aware callow was an obscure word.