Jerry Bowyer | On November 30, 2017

Senator Al Franken, who has been accused of sexual assault.

Let’s apply the basic principles I wrote about recently to our current crisis of sexual ethics…

A society which recognizes the Adamic responsibility to protect the woman would not have waited decades to deal with abuse of women. Powerful men like Clinton, Weinstein, Moore, etc. would have been dealt with much earlier. (I’m not interested in debating the list). Political allies would not have closed ranks around them automatically and attacked the victims. Gentlemanliness would have been required – especially in men of power – instead of being treated as a quaint sign of our puritan roots from which we had to emerge. The serpents would not have been allowed to slither rampant through the garden.

A society which recognizes the Biblical truth that ‘It is not good for the human man to be alone,’ would not have fallen into the warring camps of people who automatically believe the woman (because patriarchy) or automatically believe the man (because feminism). Wise people of both parties and genders would weigh the evidence carefully.

But in a gender-polarized society, there are no honest brokers left (or right), who are trusted to tell the truth. No one believes institutions and it’s largely the fault of those institutions that no one believes them.

The sexual revolution is just another version of the lie that the serpent told: ‘The rules are meant to keep you down’. But in reality the rules protected the woman in the garden (as she found out when they were discarded) and the rules of the sexual code protected women in our society (as they found out, when they were discarded). Now the twin pillars of modern progressivism are in a civil war with one another. The sexual revolution is being attacked by the victim-ideology.

My friends, this is what happens when ‘if it feels good, do it’ becomes the greatest commandment. Want to see what it looks like when you let it all hang out, it looks like Louis C.K.. It’s powerful men groping unwilling, or quasi-willing, or willing until it’s no longer advantageous young women.

Why are we so surprised that progressives who are ‘good on women’s rights’ are among the chief gropers? There is no contradiction in that at all. The progressivism and the groping are perfectly in sync: they are both part of the revolution against the moral code which protected young woman against powerful men. That’s what that code was for, for protection. Shredding it was for the purpose of removing that protection. The sexual liberation ideology did not come from poor women, it came from rich men. Vulnerable women were dragged along in its wake.

And sexual exploitation goes perfectly with a side of statism. It always has. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the king was harassing the women of the city. The gods brought him a warrior companion to distract him. Kings had harems filled with concubines. When ancient Israel decided to embrace the prevalent statism of the ancient world God warned them that the state would tax their income and conscript their men (for war) and their ‘daughters’ would be taken to the king’s palace.

Jerry Bowyer

Jerry Bowyer is a Forbes contributor, contributing editor of AffluentInvestor.com, and Senior Fellow in Business Economics at The Center for Cultural Leadership.

Jerry has compiled an impressive record as a leading thinker in finance and economics. He worked as an auditor and a tax consultant with Arthur Anderson, as Vice President of the Beechwood Company which is the family office associated with Federated Investors, and has consulted in various privatization efforts for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. He founded the influential economic think tank, the Allegheny Institute, and has lectured extensively at universities, businesses and civic groups.

Jerry has been a member of three investment committees, among which is Benchmark Financial, Pittsburgh’s largest financial services firm. Jerry had been a regular commentator on Fox Business News and Fox News. He was formerly a CNBC Contributor, has guest-hosted “The Kudlow Report”, and has written for CNBC.com, National Review Online, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as many other publications. He is the author of The Bush Boom and more recently The Free Market Capitalist’s Survival Guide, published by HarperCollins. Jerry is the President of Bowyer Research.

Jerry consulted extensively with the Bush White House on matters pertaining to the recent economic crisis. He has been quoted in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, The International Herald Tribune and various local newspapers. He has been a contributing editor of National Review Online, The New York Sun and Townhall Magazine. Jerry has hosted daily radio and TV programs and was one of the founding members of WQED’s On-Q Friday Roundtable. He has guest-hosted the Bill Bennett radio program as well as radio programs in Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles.

Jerry is the former host of WorldView, a nationally syndicated Sunday-morning political talk show created on the model of Meet The Press. On WorldView, Jerry interviewed distinguished guests including the Vice President, Treasury Secretary, HUD Secretary, former Secretary of Sate Condoleezza Rice, former Presidential Advisor Carl Rove, former Attorney General Edwin Meese and publisher Steve Forbes.

Jerry has taught social ethics at Ottawa Theological Hall, public policy at Saint Vincent’s College, and guest lectured at Carnegie Mellon’s graduate Heinz School of Public Policy. In 1997 Jerry gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Robert Morris University. He was the youngest speaker in the history of the school, and the school received more requests for transcripts of Jerry’s speech than at any other time in its 120-year history.

Jerry lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Susan, and the youngest three of their seven children.