As I understand it, in the dark days before the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, ordinary Americans could discriminate on the basis of race, sex, and sexual orientation. The government could too, although strictly speaking it was hindered by the Constitution and the post-Civil War Amendments. In the South, of course, Jim Crow laws required that ordinary Southerners discriminate on the basis of race, or the KKK would know the reason why.
Did you know? The main job of the KKK was not to lynch uppity blacks, but to intimidate whites that did not want to get with the Jim Crow program.
So we had an America with anti-Jewish covenants to keep the Jews of upscale WASP neighborhoods and country clubs, you had "Irish Need Not Apply," you had a Davis-Bacon Act to make it difficult for colored labor to compete with white labor, and a Harvard with a Jewish quota, and a South with Jim Crow laws to keep Negroes at the back of the bus, because you couldn't be sure that the bus companies would treat their black passengers like dirt without the sanction of law.
Then we got the Civil Rights Acts of 1964. What did they do? Well, they forbade government from discriminating on the basis of race and sex.
And the Civil Rights Acts also forbade individual Americans from discriminating on the basis of race and sex where a public accommodation was concerned. That is why Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) voted against the bill in the US Senate. As a libertarian he thought that while government should not be allowed to discriminate, a free person should be allowed to do so.
This is all very nice, what what has actually happened?
Well, it is perfectly clear that individuals are forbidden to discriminate on the basis or race or sex or particularly, sexual orientation, as the gay wedding cake issue proves.
But government, under the rubric of "protected classes" is back to its old Jim Crow tricks of discriminating on the basis of race and sex. Actually, its policy is more flexible than that. Today government discriminates on the basis of whatever liberals of the day want it to discriminate.
More than that, government applies considerable pressure on private institutions such as corporations and universities to discriminate in favor of "protected classes" under the notion of "diversity and inclusion." And it teaches little children to grow up and become "social justice warriors" so that they can go out into government and public institutions and implement the discriminatory policies of the ruling class.
That is why I say that there is no such thing as justice, only injustice. Injustice is the main product of government, and the more power you give government, the more injustice it will create because, after all, government is force.
But what do we do about it?
Right now, all we do is excoriate liberals left and right for their monstrous injustice and hypocrisy. These supposed Sir Launcelots or Parsifals, white knights of justice, are in fact the evil Sir Mordreds or Klingsors, black knights of injustice, they are bad people imagining they are good people. This is not the worst of the worst, for those are bad people posing as good people -- knowing they are bad. They really are the worst of the worst. In fact, of course, there are no bad people posing as good. The baddies all believe they are good. There are no Iagos in real life.
But what does Schopenhauer say? I am glad you asked. He says that "bad" refers to the individual that wills his own good without willing the "other's" good.
You may not want to know what glorious vision of justice would conservatives want to enact when the liberal beast is finally slain and we all get to live in eternal sunlit uplands?
Well, the first thing is that we do not attempt to implement some glorious vision of conservative justice. All we do is attempt to remove the worst injustice, on the notion that there is no such thing as justice, only injustice. So my Injustice (Liberal) Removal Act would simply forbid government from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, viewpoint, of any kind, whatever. And it would permit individuals to discriminate how they will. Large institutions would have limited rights to discriminate, but not much. In my world the hounds of hell would descend on the Apples and Googles that humiliated ordinary nerds on the spectrum.
Yes, but what about the poor black inner-city homeboy that nobody wants to hire, what about him? Would he not go to the wall? Actually, no. My point is that the right of the individual to discriminate helps that guy. He cannot compete one-on-one with a nice well-behaved white or Asian kid that wears pants that do not expose his butt crack. But what he can do is lower the asking price for his labor. In other words, on my view, each labor-market entrant gets evaluated solely on his overall value to the employer, not the idea of some lefty deep-state bureaucrat or some gender-studies adjunct professor. And if he gets with the program and abandons his low-rider pants and gets a good bourgeois attitude about treating customers and other employees, why then he becomes more valuable and may push for better terms of employment that might, in time, come to equal the remuneration of the lucky kids that got taught the ways of the market economy culture while still wee bairns.
My principle is simply this. Individuals should be allowed to discriminate, but governments should not be allowed to discriminate.
But what do we do about the miscreants in the deep state that continue to discriminate and invent new excuses for discrimination for which the term "protected class" seems like simple naïvété? I should think that the example of the Communist Manifesto should do the trick: "Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels." Yay!
No, we are too soft-hearted for that. Maybe all we will do is suspend their Twitter accounts over the Christmas season, or, for the worst offenders, confiscate their blue checkmarks until after the end of the next Democratic presidency.
Did you know? The main job of the KKK was not to lynch uppity blacks, but to intimidate whites that did not want to get with the Jim Crow program.
So we had an America with anti-Jewish covenants to keep the Jews of upscale WASP neighborhoods and country clubs, you had "Irish Need Not Apply," you had a Davis-Bacon Act to make it difficult for colored labor to compete with white labor, and a Harvard with a Jewish quota, and a South with Jim Crow laws to keep Negroes at the back of the bus, because you couldn't be sure that the bus companies would treat their black passengers like dirt without the sanction of law.
Then we got the Civil Rights Acts of 1964. What did they do? Well, they forbade government from discriminating on the basis of race and sex.
And the Civil Rights Acts also forbade individual Americans from discriminating on the basis of race and sex where a public accommodation was concerned. That is why Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) voted against the bill in the US Senate. As a libertarian he thought that while government should not be allowed to discriminate, a free person should be allowed to do so.
This is all very nice, what what has actually happened?
Well, it is perfectly clear that individuals are forbidden to discriminate on the basis or race or sex or particularly, sexual orientation, as the gay wedding cake issue proves.
But government, under the rubric of "protected classes" is back to its old Jim Crow tricks of discriminating on the basis of race and sex. Actually, its policy is more flexible than that. Today government discriminates on the basis of whatever liberals of the day want it to discriminate.
More than that, government applies considerable pressure on private institutions such as corporations and universities to discriminate in favor of "protected classes" under the notion of "diversity and inclusion." And it teaches little children to grow up and become "social justice warriors" so that they can go out into government and public institutions and implement the discriminatory policies of the ruling class.
That is why I say that there is no such thing as justice, only injustice. Injustice is the main product of government, and the more power you give government, the more injustice it will create because, after all, government is force.
But what do we do about it?
Right now, all we do is excoriate liberals left and right for their monstrous injustice and hypocrisy. These supposed Sir Launcelots or Parsifals, white knights of justice, are in fact the evil Sir Mordreds or Klingsors, black knights of injustice, they are bad people imagining they are good people. This is not the worst of the worst, for those are bad people posing as good people -- knowing they are bad. They really are the worst of the worst. In fact, of course, there are no bad people posing as good. The baddies all believe they are good. There are no Iagos in real life.
But what does Schopenhauer say? I am glad you asked. He says that "bad" refers to the individual that wills his own good without willing the "other's" good.
[S]uch a man does not merely assert the will to live as it appears in his own body, but in this assertion goes so far that he denies the will which appears in other individuals. This is shown by the fact that he desires their powers for the service of his own will, and seeks to destroy their existence when they stand in the way of its efforts.It is interesting to me that the market economy requires every participant to think of others' needs and will, and forces him to balance other peoples' needs and will against his own needs and will. Yet our liberal friends think they have a better idea than the market economy: what is their problem?
You may not want to know what glorious vision of justice would conservatives want to enact when the liberal beast is finally slain and we all get to live in eternal sunlit uplands?
Well, the first thing is that we do not attempt to implement some glorious vision of conservative justice. All we do is attempt to remove the worst injustice, on the notion that there is no such thing as justice, only injustice. So my Injustice (Liberal) Removal Act would simply forbid government from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, viewpoint, of any kind, whatever. And it would permit individuals to discriminate how they will. Large institutions would have limited rights to discriminate, but not much. In my world the hounds of hell would descend on the Apples and Googles that humiliated ordinary nerds on the spectrum.
Yes, but what about the poor black inner-city homeboy that nobody wants to hire, what about him? Would he not go to the wall? Actually, no. My point is that the right of the individual to discriminate helps that guy. He cannot compete one-on-one with a nice well-behaved white or Asian kid that wears pants that do not expose his butt crack. But what he can do is lower the asking price for his labor. In other words, on my view, each labor-market entrant gets evaluated solely on his overall value to the employer, not the idea of some lefty deep-state bureaucrat or some gender-studies adjunct professor. And if he gets with the program and abandons his low-rider pants and gets a good bourgeois attitude about treating customers and other employees, why then he becomes more valuable and may push for better terms of employment that might, in time, come to equal the remuneration of the lucky kids that got taught the ways of the market economy culture while still wee bairns.
My principle is simply this. Individuals should be allowed to discriminate, but governments should not be allowed to discriminate.
But what do we do about the miscreants in the deep state that continue to discriminate and invent new excuses for discrimination for which the term "protected class" seems like simple naïvété? I should think that the example of the Communist Manifesto should do the trick: "Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels." Yay!
No, we are too soft-hearted for that. Maybe all we will do is suspend their Twitter accounts over the Christmas season, or, for the worst offenders, confiscate their blue checkmarks until after the end of the next Democratic presidency.
No comments:
Post a Comment