Americans don’t have to wait until the Fourth of July to celebrate the greatest country ever known to man. Valentine’s Day provides an excellent yet grossly overlooked opportunity for one to express his love for his significant other and his homeland. The nation should derive pride not only from producing unparalleled prosperity and saving the world from the doomsday grips of Hitler and Hussein, but also from its commitment to true love capitalistic love. It’s time we woke up and stopped falsely heralding Paris as the ‘city of love’ and instead celebrated America’s unbridled capitalism in the boardroom and the bedroom.
‘Capitalistic love’ is by no means a euphemism for prostitution. The free-market love that characterizes our society does not involve buying and selling lovers but trading values values of the heart and mind. If love were really a selfless act as it is so often advertised then why would anyone go on a date with girl next door instead of the entire cul-de-sac? If love were really a collective emotion, then why does the girl at the dance have but one admirer? There’s nothing selfless about someone loving someone so completely that he wants her all for himself and for all of his life and there’s nothing wrong with it. If people maximize profits in business, then why shouldn’t they maximize personal happiness in the selfish pursuit of a life-long lover? When a man gets married, it does not make the bride his private property, but he does grant her the exclusive right to his heart, and should expect nothing less in return.
One of the most illogical yet profoundly persuasive attacks on the ‘bourgeois’ institution of marriage is found in The Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels deride the process as motivated purely by the desire for ‘private gain.’ There can be no argument with the philosophy behind marriage, but it is beyond me why anyone would fault two individuals for selfishly pursuing each other in hopes of gaining mutual, matrimonial happiness. Even more disturbing than their negative spin on ‘private gain’ is the authors’ vision for a proper substitute ‘an openly legalized system of free love.’ Of course, what they primarily had in mind was not a legal climate in which free love was allowed, but one in which marriage between any consenting individuals was thoroughly outlawed.
Free peoples are allowed to choose their own paths, and thankfully the free peoples in this nation understand that adopting a communal lifestyle, in which individual happiness is treated as a vice, brings them a great degree closer to oppressed peoples. Marx and Engels may have long passed away and so has, for the most part, their only legitimate target (marriage as a tool of inheritance) but their followers still manage to abound.
The fall of the Soviet Union does not absolve any truly freedom-loving person from rallying against communalistic propaganda, in the fields of economics or romance.
A glance around the globe reveals many vast differences, from insignificant ones such as skin color to gruesome cultural trends masquerading as legitimate regional attitudes. The look of love is not very optimistic. The war on terror familiarized Americans with Muslim practices regarding marriage. It is vital that we fight tool and nail not only against al Qaeda but also against the sickeningly destructive social order it seeks to spread across the globe. Despite what politically-correct professors may teach, forcing one’s wife to don a burka is not a sign of love not in this country nor any other spot on the planet.
On the African continent, a plethora of tribes engage in rampant polygamy the antithesis of true love, not to mention a catalyst for the destructive spread of AIDS. While India has made tremendous progress over the years, arranged marriages there are still simply too common. Aiming to please one’s parents and observe ‘tradition’ is not a legitimate excuse for sacrificing the free exchange of the paramount value to sheer force. And even in western Europe, the French make a regular mockery of the institution: the men parade around with mistresses, and the wives look away. America may be far from perfect, but at least our nation is built upon ideals grounded in individualism, honesty and the selfish pursuit of happiness.
The morality of sex isn’t measured by its inclusion in marriage. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with a couple living together for years and never tying the knot. But this Valentine’s Day, when someone gives his girlfriend a dozen roses, he’s doing a lot more than presenting her with costly flowers. The spirit of selfish love at the root of all monogamy is as American as apple pie and baseball and war.
[ Jacob Cote, a freshman in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press, and can be reached at [email protected]. ]