To walk away from marriage is to abandon your duty
by Thomas Pascoe, The Conservative Woman:
Few would contest that public debate in Britain has become more barbarous. It has become barbarous in a very specific sense: that a desire to do something is very often presented as the sole possible criterion for action.
This is the refuge of the savage. Civilisation is based almost entirely on people acting with other things in view than their immediate desires.
At a fundamental level, the rule of law depends on our willingness to bind ourselves to conditions we may not wish to follow. Our political and economic systems are both based on the idea that men will be true to their word and uphold it, whatever the cost to them. The happiness and prosperity of so many families depends upon the security of spouses in their wedding vows.
The most visible manifestation of this instinct is in manners, the public code of behaviour observed for the benefit of others. You seldom now see small gestures of civility between people: covering the mouth when sneezing on a train, smiling at a child, behaving with deference to the old.
This is a tragedy. We are less united as a people that at any time in recent memory, not just a result of Brexit but also identity politics. It is a splintering that has caused us to step back from civilisation and return to baser instincts in our dealings with others.
As an example, Thursday’s Telegraph carried an interview with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox who is the CEO of 20-first, ‘a gender balance consultancy’.
Ms Wittenberg-Cox has a message for older Telegraph readers: if your marriage is only ‘good enough’, perhaps you should get divorced. She tells the paper:
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