Secret Views, Cont.

Readers share what, until now, they’ve kept quiet about

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

A few days ago, I published a column called “Secret Views.” Its subheading was “Things we might whisper to each other.” I whispered a couple of mine, and invited others to whisper theirs to me, via e-mail—which many readers did.

I thank you all. And will publish a sampling.

A reader begins, “I’m a preacher, so right there you know I have all sorts of secret opinions or suspicions I won’t share.” (I loved that opening.) One of the things he goes on to say is, “I have seen too much covert racism, even in the last couple years, to think we can justly rid ourselves entirely of affirmative-action practices.”

I would like to opine on this, but I realize that I would like to opine on everything—and do—and so will confine this particular column to reader responses.

One of them goes something like this (I am paraphrasing): “I think loyalty is overrated. If your family or friends start hurting you, or keep hurting you, screw ’em.”

From another reader:

I think it’s okay for people to renounce their homeland, to choose a patria other than the one they were born into. This may seem rather natural to Americans, but it isn’t for many elsewhere, where national allegiance on account of the accident of birthplace is supposed to lie beyond all questioning. But many a patria is an ungrateful pater, and I see no reason that people can’t redirect their sense of loyalty to a more welcoming homeland.

A note from England:

Guilty secrets? Well, speaking as an evangelical Christian (of the older, historic type, in my case a believer in the 39 Articles of the Church of England), I don’t have a particular problem with women priests and ministers, unlike many of my fellow believers who do. I know that a lot of women priests have turned out to be theological liberals, but then so have many of their male counterparts! I try to judge ministers by their utterances in the pulpit, not by their sex.

Our Englishman goes on to say,

I’m also a law-and-order conservative who doesn’t however believe in Brexit, which was an issue that consumed so many conservatives in Britain.

One more:

And I’m a man who spent nearly 40 years playing rock music (guitar, bass, organ) in different bands, but prefers traditional church music to the newer type.

Amen. (Whoops, there’s an opinion of mine.)

Okay, hang on to your socks. A reader writes,

You may or may not want to print this one. The acceptance of homosexuality—and by that I mostly mean same-sex marriage but also factors like forcing Catholic adoption agencies to serve same-sex couples—has been a net negative for society. And I say this as a gay man in a same-sex marriage.

I’m all for a live-and-let-live attitude in a pluralistic society, and I am happy to live in a culture where, by and large, I don’t have to worry about getting beat up or thrown off a roof. Still, I think we have gone way too far. ...

Tolerance is well and good, but normalization is something else, and the biological reality is, this is not normal. ...

Two things can be true at the same time. I can realize who I am and live within a fallen world as best I can and I can also realize it is not ideal.

Another reader writes,

I am both a feminist and a conservative. It may seem that never the two would meet, but here I am. I often (half) joke that, as a feminist conservative, no one likes me.

Well, I do.

Let me now paraphrase what a different reader tells us:

People say that police brutality is a big issue, and it’s true: it is. But a far bigger issue is the crime rate in our country. Especially the rate of violent crime. “There are too many young men in prison,” people say. Well, maybe there aren’t enough. Following the law, we should imprison as many people as necessary, to make our society safer.

And if we have to spend a great deal of money on the building and operation of more prisons, so be it. Money well spent.

A reader writes,

My commitment to the U.S. Constitution naturally puts me in a position to defend the Second Amendment, but at the same time, I believe it to be a simple fact that there would be far less violence if guns were harder to obtain. ...

I think my perspective comes from being born and raised in New York City, where guns tend to enter our lives only in violent and criminal contexts. There’s no hunting culture here. No one taught me to shoot rabbits when I was a wee lad. ...

I am for the Second Amendment in theory and against it in practice. I think a little gun control is a good thing.

Our reader adds, “Wow—that felt good to get off my chest. Thanks for letting me share my secret, Jay.”

How about the following? Interesting, right?

The thing I might whisper to you is that, while I am an extreme fan of the free market and want to privatize virtually everything, it’s also the case that not many people truly manage their money well—in the sense of putting off immediate wants for future needs. So that makes me uneasy about the fact that payday lending has more locations than McDonald’s—and also makes me sympathize with Singapore’s compulsory savings regime, which essentially functions as an incubation against welfare.

A different reader writes,

I guess the real “secret view” I hold is that I suspect that a universal income of sorts might be necessary at some point. I have previously agreed that work requirements for welfare are helpful and, more generally, that earning one’s way is a good thing, for many reasons. But ...

This next letter, I loved the last line of:

I think men and women are different.

I think shame is sometimes a good thing, or at least connected to good.

I also think there is grace for things we cannot (seem to) help.

That’s as far as I’ll go today.

Get ready for the next one, y’all:

Saving Private Ryan and Apocalypse Now are big stinking piles of fake Hollywood crapola.

A reader who describes herself as “center left” writes,

While I am very pro-woman and our independence, I value the other strengths that men have. I also have a real girly side, and I don’t want to be a “bad-ass woman” and fight men.

Here is another reader who puts herself in the “center left” category:

It’s super-easy to identify girls from boys. Women from men. Are there edge cases? Sure. Move on. Please don’t bring this up ever again.

Sometimes women bear culpability for unwanted sexual encounters.

Women are a**holes too.

From a different reader, we have,

Secret view? Maybe it’s more of a secret action, and it’s silly. I roll up my windows before driving past a cemetery because of my reluctance to inhale cemetery cooties.

All right, let’s end on sports—and a letter from my fellow writer John Guaspari:

Jay,

I am a dyed-in-the-wool baseball fan, very much a traditionalist. However ...

The designated hitter has now been with us for 52 years. It’s even in the National League. And I’ve not only made my peace with it, I also actually think it’s now good for the game. ...

The reason I think the DH is good for the game is that offense now needs whatever crumbs of advantage it can get over the dominance of pitchers. MLB’s rules changes of the past few years have, for the most part, been good. But they’ve not addressed the main problem, which is too many so-called “true outcomes,” which is just another way of saying too few balls put into play, which is just another way of saying not enough instances during a game in which fielders are fielding and base runners are running.

I wrote an article about this a few years ago in which I proposed the solution: move the mound back a skosh. (I leave it to those more expert to define what that skosh should be.) ...

Back to the point of my e-mail: My secret view is, I’m okay with the DH, but I don’t let on when with baseball purists.

Thank you, dear readers. Good to talk with you, on matters verboten and boten (so to speak).