In Search of the People (Part III)

(Part I, II)

While leftist revolutionaries around the world came to embrace third-world peasants, Arab nationalists, and even Islamists as manifestations of the People, Western revolutionaries had a problem as they lacked these groups at home. The United States never had a peasant class. In Europe, capitalism and the Industrial Revolution had eliminated the peasant class in a mostly bloodless fashion and, until the end of the twentieth century, Arab and Muslim migration were not significant issues. The solution was to turn to racial and later sexual minorities.

Mid-twentieth-century American radicals “discovered” blacks, a group that was honestly being oppressed. At a time when white workers were embracing the New Deal and its protections for unions and even going so far as to vote for Eisenhower, blacks stood out as a group whose problems could not easily be solved by lobbying for some changes to current laws. Blacks were up against the well-organized conspiracy of segregation that was passively facilitated by a wider white society that, even subconsciously, looked down on blacks and did not see their plight as a priority.

In the end, though, the mainline Civil Rights Movement proved a failure for leftist revolutionaries. The Civil Rights Movement succeeded in defeating formal segregation by pursuing a moderate path that was fundamentally unrevolutionary. It avoided violence and framed itself as being within the American tradition. For Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., blacks were Americans who, as Americans, were now coming to collect on the American promise. He succeeded precisely because he managed to convince white America that he was not a revolutionary but an American asking for perfectly reasonable American things. 

While the Civil Rights Movement itself proved distinctively unrevolutionary and, even more subversively demonstrated that a reformist movement really could bring about real change within a liberal democracy, it still ended up proving useful to the left. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, while well-intentioned and perhaps necessary under the circumstances, effectively eliminated the constitutional balance between the federal and state governments. Now the federal government can force any law upon a state simply by claiming that it is a matter of civil rights, leaving us with a dangerously overpowered federal government just waiting for leftists to take control and turn it to their own ends.

At the end of the day, the Civil Rights Movement did not solve the economic problems facing the black community. This caused many civil rights leaders, including Dr. King in the last years of his life, to drift toward a more revolutionary mindset. This did nothing to help actual black people. This should only be expected as the purpose of a leftist revolution is not to improve the lives of actual individuals. A group is only useful, and therefore only counts as part of the People, when their problems are not being solved. Thus, leftist revolutionaries have needed to keep blacks poor and blame American racism for it. One can see this most easily in urban policy and education, areas dominated by the left, that have utterly failed the black community economically but have kept alive a sense of grievance.   

The less plausible the charge of racism, in the conventional sense, has become, as Americans have become less racist, the more racism has needed to be redefined in ever more abstract frameworks. This has benefited leftists as it makes the case for revolution. If you are black and your goal is for white people to not hate you and conspire to keep you out of middle-class jobs or even murder you, there is no need for a revolution. If your goal is to not be an outsider in a culture created by white people for the benefit of white people, then the only solution is for there to be a revolution. This will tear down white American culture and place blacks as the People at the center of the new culture. White people will be stripped of any positive identity and left only with the option of being allies of blacks if they wish to not be oppressors. 

The most important leftist success of the 1960s was the sexual revolution. This was indirectly connected to the Civil Rights Movement. As Shelby Steele has argued, white American parents who were complicit in tolerating segregation and felt guilty about it were not in a position to challenge their children over whom they slept with and their kids knew it. Sexuality has long been a tool of revolutionaries as communities require rigid sexual rules to establish clear lines of kinship that place children within the group. Allow children to be born outside of clear families and their community becomes the non-community of the revolution. The Sexual Revolution has been particularly effective at maintaining blacks as a revolutionary class. It has inhibited economic growth within the black community. At the same time, anyone who points this out can be charged as a racist. Thus, blacks are more likely to assume that the source of their problems is racism, as manifested in bourgeois values like the nuclear family, and the only solution is revolution.  

The Sexual Revolution also created a new oppressed group that could serve as manifestations of the People for leftist revolutionaries, sexual minorities. It was leftist revolutionaries who decided that gay people were actually a group as opposed to simply individuals who pursued an action that should or should not be tolerated to various degrees. Furthermore, the fact that the sexual revolution made sexual repression a form of oppression rendered gays an oppressed group. Gays are an even better class of revolutionaries than blacks as accommodating them within a traditional society is even more difficult, hence gays are more likely to assume that their only solution is the revolution and will not be bought off by minor reforms such as the removal of anti-sodomy laws.

Furthermore, the fact that even considering gays as a group is an invention of leftist revolutionaries has meant that the gay community is intrinsically tied to the leftist revolutionary cause and cannot easily exist without it. It makes perfect sense for a black conservative to still want there to be a black community such as their presumably black families. It is hardly obvious why an Andrew Sullivan style conservative gay community would want to operate as a gay community as opposed to being a tolerated minority within their presumably heterosexual families and the wider community. Keep in mind that gays, unlike blacks, are usually not raised with their identity. This is something they consciously embrace as teenagers or later in life.  

Much as with blacks, the gay rights movement involves an act of motte and bailey duplicity. Now that the sexual revolution has happened, it makes sense to not stigmatize people for sexual acts between consenting adults. We might even take the next step and say that government should recognize same-sex marriage. None of this, in itself, would be particularly revolutionary. On the contrary, accommodating homosexuals in such a fashion lessens their ability to serve as revolutionaries and risks their status as a manifestation of the People.

The revolutionary doctrine would be to say that the sexual acts of homosexuals give them authenticity as a manifestation of the People that heterosexuals lack, particularly if they submit themselves to traditional morality. Heterosexuality does make one part of the People but their oppressor. As such, heterosexuals need homosexuals to redeem and make them part of the People. This is done by allowing heterosexuals to become allies and share in the task of tearing down society and rebuilding it around homosexuals.

Homosexuality requires someone to do, or at least desire to do, something that most people would find repulsive. This limits the number of people who can be gay. The solution is for sex education that will encourage more people to overcome any predispositions against engaging in gay sex so there can be more gay people. Alternatively, there are the bi-sexual and queer identities that anyone can embrace. Thus, the LBTQ+ identity has the ability to become a larger group than African Americans and thus a better claim to being the American People. And since LGBTQ+ identity really means nothing more than rejecting traditional sexual norms, this manifestation of the People can be relied upon to truly embrace the revolution as their very identity is meaningless otherwise.  

More recently, as homosexuality has gained mainstream acceptance and lost its revolutionary edge, we have seen the rise of a transgender identity, which furthers the revolutionary logic of homosexuality. Unlike homosexuality, which requires no great metaphysical leap to accept that a person really is attracted to people of the same sex, accepting that someone is trans requires buying into a larger metaphysical system that the person really is a different “gender” from how they were identified at birth. The reason for accepting this new metaphysics is that leftist revolutionaries have placed transgender people as an authentic manifestation of the People and to reject this claim makes you an oppressor and not part of the People. This means that transgender people are dependent on leftist revolutionaries not only to have a transgender community but even to be trans in the first place.

Transgenderism, building off queer identity, is something so nebulous that anyone can claim to be trans and, thus become a manifestation of the People. That being said, “authentic” transgenderhood requires hormone injections and surgery. Going through this means that not only are you the male or female that you claim to be but you are more authentically that gender than those “assigned” their identities by their doctor at birth, thus you are an authentic manifestation of the People. Cisgender people can only become part of the People by being allies of transgenders and acknowledging their greater authenticity.

In the present discourse, it has become common to see rhetoric like “Gaza to Ferguson” or “Queers for Palestine.” If one thinks in terms of helping members of particular groups improve their physical lots in life and overcome oppression, this sounds strange. We are talking about different groups in different parts of the planet, with different needs that might even clash. For example, Hamas believes in murdering gay people. 

These claims begin to make sense once you realize that we are not talking about actual blacks, homosexuals, or Palestinians. Instead, these are simply names for manifestations of the People, united in being rhetorically useful for leftist revolutionaries. The point is not to improve the lot of members of any of these groups. On the contrary, doing so would lessen their usefulness to the revolution and render them no longer manifestations of the People.  Thus, we are not interested in helping gay Palestinians. Such a Palestinian undermines Palestinian peoplehood and, thus, it is a revolutionary act of the People to kill them. By contrast, a gay person in the United States does represent the People so not wishing them mazal tov on their wedding is a counter-revolutionary act that makes you an oppressor. 

The real purpose is for there to be the revolution. This will place the truest manifestation of the People, leftist revolutionaries, in power. In the end, not only will whites, Christians, and Jews not be part of the People but even the "oppressed" groups, which were supposed to be favored to make up for their lack of privilege will eventually also lose their place as they stop being needed and can be replaced with a more plausibly revolutionary manifestation of the People.   

Do You Support LGBTQ+ Rights?

 

I was recently asked by a student if I supported LGBTQ+ rights. I asked them what they meant by rights. It quickly became apparent that this student had not seriously considered what counts as a right and what it might be based upon. In essence, their belief in LGBTQ+ rights was the practical equivalent of being a sports fan. They were not asking me whether I agreed with their beliefs as they had no beliefs for me to agree or disagree with but merely if I cheered for their particular team. Their teachers had taught them that to be a good person, they needed to recite the credo "I support LGBTQ+ rights." For all intents and purposes, the students could recite something in Latin and it would be equally meaningful. To be clear, I do not question the intelligence or decency of this student. The fault is not with them but with the educational malpractice that they have been subjected to.   

What might it mean to support LGBTQ+ rights? One possible response is that LGBTQ+ people should be equal to heterosexual and cisgender people. This has a surface plausibility to it. LGBTQ+ people are human beings with rights who deserve to live with dignity just like everyone else. Now, what might this mean in practice? Consider that people with poor social skills, nose pickers, and MAGA Republicans are all human beings with rights who deserve to live with dignity. This certainly means that they have legal rights. If you are committed to civil liberties then there should be no moral difference between the police beating a confession out of someone with a pride flag or a MAGA flag. This is distinct from any kind of social right. In the real world, people are going to lose out on friendships and jobs for failing to follow all kinds of random social conventions that could never be defended simply on rational grounds. Furthermore, these social failings may be so subtle that neither party can even articulate the rule that has been violated. As someone on the autism spectrum, I am forced to reckon with this fact on a daily basis and pay a heavy price for it. Once we accept that society can penalize nose pickers, the burden of proof falls on anyone who objects to society penalizing anyone for violating a social convention. If people have the right to arbitrarily give nose pickers a look of disgust, they have the equal right to arbitrarily give a person in drag a look of disgust.    

I believe that LGBTQ+ people have the right to negative liberty. This means that the government should not cause physical harm to people it classifies as LGBTQ+. Such people should be able to engage in consensual behavior between adults as they wish whether that is non-heterosexual sex or gender reassignment surgery. As language is an arbitrary social construct, LGBTQ+ people have the right to call themselves married or members of the opposite sex. If they can convince the majority of society to speak their language, all power to them. This would be no different from the advocacy of Esperanto speakers. 

I would not be willing to grant LGBTQ+ people positive liberty but then again I do not believe that anyone has a right to positive liberty. I am willing to accept a legal obligation under the social contract to be drafted and have to mow down, with machine gun fire, a mob of theocrats trying to violently stop a gay orgy from happening. I am not willing to execute Christian bakers who refuse to bake gay wedding cakes. 

In any argument, it is crucial to control the terms used. Once the issue is framed in terms of supporting or opposing LGBTQ+ rights, the LGBTQ+ side is guaranteed to win. My students may not know what rights are but they have been raised to believe that rights, whatever magical black box they might be, are an important good to such extent that your support or opposition to them is what makes you a good or bad person. If we are going to change minds on LGBTQ+ issues, we are first going to have to get them to think seriously about what rights mean.  

Can There Be a Video Game Too Immoral to Play?

In a Jonathan Haidt style exercise of asking disturbing moral questions that people feel strongly about even as they are unable to defend their positions, I asked a student of mine whether it is possible for there to be a video that would be immoral to play. He immediately jumped on the obvious liberal utilitarian response of no; simply playing a game, by definition, cannot, in of itself, harm anyone so it can never be immoral.

Level One: Wolfenstein 3D.




This classic game involves running around and systematically shooting people and dogs, who scream and produce pools of highly pixelated blood. Of course, the people you are shooting are Nazis (as are the dogs one guesses) so pretending to commit mass murder is, perhaps, defensible.

Level Two: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR).




It is a feature of a number of Star Wars games that you can choose to turn to the Dark Side. This means that instead of light-sabering and blasting your way through stormtroopers (the moral equivalent of Nazis) you can murder innocent people on your path to becoming the Sith Lord ruler of the galaxy, bringing misery to trillions of beings.




In defense of KOTOR, the violence here is safely out of the realm of reality. None of us can use the Force (let alone become Sith Lords) or lightsabers. Perhaps, the distance from actual mass murder is enough that pretending to commit such horrors is not in bad taste.

Level Three: Grand Theft Auto (GTA).

GTA allows you to play a street-level criminal. You can commit crimes ranging from selling drugs to running over the prostitutes of a rival pimp and shooting police officers. Unlike Sith Lord, this is a plausible career choice for players. This raises the question of whether GTA encourages violence. Alternatively, a person who likes GTA is at least signaling that he might wish to behave like this in real life. Clearly, a game like GTA forces our utilitarian to hunker down on his insistence that direct physical harm should be relevant. He is particularly vulnerable here as it is hardly obvious that banning the game would not reduce crime. By insisting on only direct harm, our utilitarian is showing that it is his liberal convictions that dominate.

Level Four: Racial Violence

It is my understanding that neo-nazis and others of that ilk have produced games that allow players to fight a race war against blacks, Jews, and other "undesirables." Imagine a game where you can shoot your way through a black church and then burn it down with small children inside.

My student conceded that such a game would be immoral to play though he could not offer a reason why pretending to murder black people in church should be wrong while pretending to murder cops is ok. It cannot be simply that playing a racist game is itself racist and not just pretend racism. To be ok with shooting cops in a game also demonstrates a lack of concern for the lives of cops, particularly to the extent that you are not ok with shooting blacks in a game.

The stakes here are very high and not just for video games. Once we acknowledge that there are some things so horrible that you should not even pretend to do them, much of literature becomes endangered. Plato famously wanted to ban the Homeric epics on account of their immoral behavior. In defense of Plato, the fact that Achilles and Odysseus make lies, murder, and sexual assault appear respectable, arguably makes the Illiad and the Odyssey a greater moral threat to society than a racist video game.

I agree with my student that there is an important line between GTA and racist violence games. If I were to defend this position, I would argue that even pretend racist violence is out of bounds because it violates a kind of social contract in ways that regular pretend violence does not. Chris Caldwell argues that the 1964 Civil Rights Act created a new constitution with the power to trump even the actual Constitution. Similarly, we can see American whites after the Civil Rights Movement agreeing to a new social contract with blacks. Since blacks had the moral high ground due to the fact that America's history of slavery and segregation was particularly embarrassing during a period of post-colonialism and the Cold War, they could demand not only technical legal equality but also that the American narrative should be reimagined to place the struggle over racism at the center. Blacks got to become an essential part of the American story and not just an inconvenient historical quirk. Liberal whites got to be the whites who fought for equality. Now for a white person to now be a "good American" they must actively present themselves as active opponents of racism.

Part of what makes this new social contract possible is that whites consistently underestimate the difficulty of living up to their end of it. It is easy to condemn racism as something other less enlightened people do. Truly opposing racism is actually quite impossible. For a white person to argue that they are free from racism is to demonstrate that they are actually racist as they fail to appreciate the true centrality of racism. To the extent that any white person can escape the taint of racism, it loses some of its centrality and reduces the relevance of blacks.

To be white in America is to be Tantalus, ever reaching for that reasonable goal of not judging people by the color of their skin and hoping that black people will give them absolution. If we only denounce other white people slightly less embedded within this narrative then that absolution can be ours. This game gains its highly seductive power precisely because it appears so reasonable. Racism is real and it should be denounced. Reasonable people should be able to agree that certain things, particularly within the context of the real horrors of American history, should not be said or done. So only a "racist" could reject this process. For example, I oppose the use of blackface and the n-word. I oppose Trump largely because he empowers genuine racists. Does this protect me against the charge of racism? To believe that it might would demonstrate that I am, in fact, a secret racist.

From this perspective, playing a racist game raises a different question from playing a murderer. For the American post-Civil Rights narrative to function, we must see the murder of blacks as different from other kinds of murder to the extent that we would take racist murder as something personal that strikes at our very being. Anything else demonstrates that we do not truly buy into the notion that racial struggle is central to American identity or worse that we take the white-supremacist side. Regardless of how we really feel about a racist game, it is of even greater importance that we condemn other people for being open to playing such games. Who can resist the opportunity to earn a little absolution for racism at so little cost by taking a stance against a hypothetical game?

There is a certain irony here. Freedom of expression is an intrinsic part of American identity. As such, it would be considered un-American to condemn the playing of a game even one that advocates murdering prostitutes and cops. To even attempt to argue from the perspective of virtue ethics that such a game could corrupt one's soul simply and that one should at least be bothered by the concept demonstrates that one is not sufficiently embedded within the American notions of freedom of expression. To support censorship when it comes to racist violence becomes a kind of antinomian embrace of American values. You value the new narrative of defining America in terms of the struggle against racism that you are even willing to support censorship, risking your American identity.

As Haidt argues, our moral values are intuitively formed in our emotions and it is left to our intellects to justify our morality after the fact. My objection to racist games is honestly heartfelt. As a product of the post Civil Rights social contract, I was educated to not only oppose racism intellectually but, more importantly, to be horrified at the concept. Any attempt on my part to defend anti-racism on intellectual grounds is bound to feel contrived at best. 

So I put it to my readers, is it immoral to play a racist game as opposed to shooting cops in a game? If so, what intellectual justification are you willing to offer as opposed to strongly worded self-righteousness?

Requiring Racism: The Tyrannical Implications of Democracy

What I am about to argue should not be seen as a defense of racism. As an individualist, I accept the individual as the only meaningful moral and political unite. As such, I do not believe that racial groups exist in any objective sense. Furthermore, readers should remember that I am an anarcho-capitalist who believes that individuals have the right to secede from any government they do not actively support. The fact that democratic governments require some form of chauvinism in order to function is simply a reason why people should be allowed to secede from even democracies. Just so we are clear, racism is not okay because it is democratic. On the contrary, democracy is a problem because it requires racism or some closely related form of bigotry. As to what should replace national governments, I am totally ok with anything that does not require violence as, by definition, that would be an improvement. If this means people freely deciding to set up socialist communes, so be it. You own your body; you are allowed to submit to any government you choose as long as you do not force me to go along with it.

The foundation of any state is "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (it is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland). Any state that cannot rely on some class of people to sacrifice their lives will not be able to defend a border, will cease having a monopoly on violence over its territory, and will eventually collapse or fall prey to a state that can call on such people. The basic problem with democracy is that the moment you give everyone equal rights no one has any reason to be loyal to the state even to the point of dying for it. Regardless of any foreign invaders, a democracy requires that all of its citizens use their vote to promote the national good as opposed to their personal interests. So for example, I would clearly benefit from a government program to fund bloggers. That being said, I should not vote for such policies because if everyone thought like that the entire country would eventually go bankrupt. In practice, democracies, when left unchecked, quickly devolve into attempts by all of its citizens to live off of everyone else, an unsustainable system. 

Aristocracies did not have this problem. Imagine that you were part of the ten percent in most civilizations for whom life was not dreadful and I was to tell you that you needed to go to war and that there was a good chance you would not come back alive. You could refuse to fight but, if you did, your children would be reduced to working themselves to death like everyone else. Fight and you have a chance to preserve your children in a life of luxury. Aristocrats have had the further advantage that they were a small minority trying to live off of the rest of society. As long as they did not push things to the extremes of 1789 France, they could succeed quite nicely without causing national collapse.

The classic example of this democratic problem was the Roman Empire. It was built by recruiting a small elite in every province and putting them in power. These people then had an incentive to be loyal to Rome and keep their people in line. Think of the High Priest Caiaphas, in the passion narrative, pushing for Jesus' crucifixion. People joined the Roman legions to earn citizenship. One of the things that helped bring down the Empire was the fact that, in the 3rd century C.E., Rome expanded its citizenship rolls. Instead of winning people gratitude, this made people not want to fight to protect the empire. Why put your life in danger for citizenship now that it was worthless?

As someone who lives in California, why should I be willing to fight and die so that California remains part of the United States and does not revert back to Mexico? For that matter, why should I care if the United States ceased to exist? America is a modern creation that has not existed for most of human history and, presumably, the human race will continue after this country is no more.

The democratic answer to this is ideology. If I associate my country with a particular ideology, such as Liberalism, and associate any invader with the negation of what I believe, such as Fascism, it becomes reasonable to sacrifice myself even for people I do not even know or like. It is possible to argue that there is something special about the United States, as the defender of liberty, that mankind would lose without it. Historically the United States has come closest to making this argument work. The United States was born as a unique experiment in large scale republican democracy. During the late 18th and for much of the 19th century, it was reasonable to believe that if the country were to fall, that would be the end of democracy for the entire world. As such, any serious democrat, anywhere in the world, should be willing to die for America.

A critical part of the United States' cultural success has been its ability to use democratic ideology as a glue to bring the country together. Even today, with the possible exception of Canada, this country is better than anyone at absorbing immigrants from totally foreign cultures. No matter your religion, race or where you live, if you believe in liberal democracy and free enterprise, you already are an American. You may need to get to this country and learn the language, but those are formalities. This goes beyond laws on the books to the nature of the culture. I could move to France, learn French and become a French citizen but I could never be truly French. The reason for this is that turning non-Frenchmen into Frenchmen plays no role in France's sense of self. 

The problem with relying on ideology is that it can hardly be taken for granted that the supporters of particular ideas are going to be found solely on one geographic area. Republicans and Democrats both have radically different visions for this country and speak of each other in language suited for a foreign invader. Would either of them be worse off if they had to deal with the citizens of a different country instead of each other? Does it make sense for members of either party to sacrifice themselves for the other side's America, particularly if another country could offer them a better partisan deal?

I have utter contempt for both Republicans and Democrats. If California were to revert back to Mexico and I was to become a Mexican citizen, that would hardly mean that I have betrayed the cause of liberty as Mexico is also a liberal democracy, one whose political institutions are not obviously worse than ours. Furthermore, would it necessarily follow that I would find the particular policy positions of the Mexican government worse than our current administration's? Particularly if I could negotiate with Mexico before treasonously helping them capture California, I am sure we could come to a suitable arrangement regarding tax rates and guarantees of personal liberty. So Mexico might want me to learn Spanish and salute their flag; what is the big deal?

What is needed is an ideology that guarantees that we should have more in common even with our domestic political opponents than with foreigners. Such an ideology would, by definition, be bigotry and its success would depend precisely on our willingness to embrace all of its worse elements. Imagine that Mexico has invaded and has been greeted as liberators by the Left eager to not be ruled by Trump. Declaring Republicans a menace to the world, the United Nations is working on a plan to divide the country into districts to house refugees from different countries. If you are a racist who believes that the United States is the world's only hope for a "white man's republic," the thought of your daughter having to go to a Mexican public school where she will learn Spanish and to hate the "oppressive" American Empire would fill you with dread. Throw in the prospect of some big Hispanic boy sitting down next to her and offering "protection" and you will be running toward the front with whatever weapon you can lay your hands on. Rather you should die and your children should know what it is to be an American than passively accept "white genocide." If there is not a drop of racism or national chauvinism in your body, why should you object to any of this let alone be willing to shed blood over mere lines on a map?

It was not a coincidence that modern democracy was born alongside the nation-state. As long as nation-states were not directly competing against each other but against crown and altar conservative governments, one could pretend that nation-states were not ideologies of group supremacy. As soon as the nation-state became the dominant government ideology in the West, nation-states found themselves locked in a zero-sum struggle for dominance. If Germans were to be a great people, it could only be because Poles and Slavs were not.

The United States' transnational sense of self protected it from ethnic chauvinism as, besides Native Americans, there has never been an American ethnicity. That being said, white supremacy was at the heart of the American democratic experiment. Working-class Americans could be the equals of the wealthy and both could be relied upon to sacrifice for the good of the country because they were bound by their sense of being white. Slavery made the early republic politically possible and segregation allowed the United States to absorb millions of European immigrants at the end of the 19th century. It was not for nothing that Booker T. Washington opposed immigration. The United States could either embrace blacks as fellow Americans or European immigrants as fellow whites.

Activists like Colin Kaepernick are on solid ground, in terms of history, when they find the Star-Spangled Banner and the Betsy Ross flag to be objectionable. The problem is that by openly putting themselves in opposition to American History, they are only making matters worse for themselves. By contrast, part of the genius of the civil rights movement was its ability to call out American racism while still placing itself within the American tradition. As a white person, I can believe that American democracy has never given blacks a fair deal but that certainly does not make me suddenly trust Kaepernick to give his life for this country and not stab it in the back. Regardless of whether a Red Dawn scenario ever happens, the same logic applies to public policy. The same Kaepernick who I assume would gladly betray me (perhaps rightfully so) cannot be trusted to refrain from conspiring to use welfare programs as political cover to force white people like me to pay the "reparations" that he feels I owe him. Under such circumstances, neither of us can be trusted to act in the kind of good faith necessary for an honest democracy.

Israel is another great example of this nationalism problem. What allows it to function as a democracy and even to absorb large numbers of immigrants is its Jewish identity. If you consider some ethnic chauvinism to be an inevitable part of the human condition to be laughed at then Israel can still be legitimate. The moment we accept, as the modern left does, that even soft bigotry is some kind of original sin at the heart of all that ails civilization then Israel stands guilty of racism, particularly once we acknowledge that Israel's continued existence comes at the expense of the Palestinians.

To be clear, being a nationalist does not mean that you a Nazi willing to send people to concentration camps. That being said, nationalism requires the rejection of principled universalism along the lines of Stoicism or Kantianism and stands guilty of soft bigotry in the sense of preferring "your" people to others. Note that this is not necessarily such a bad thing. There is something to be said for a Chestertonian form of tolerance. Our group is the best. Other people probably think the same thing about themselves so we should just agree to disagree and leave each other alone. Yoram Hazony makes a powerful argument as to why nationalism, for all of its flaws, is a necessary antidote for the illiberal implications of universalism.

I am not a universalist. I want the state reduced to a point that all citizens willingly consent to a social contract to die even for their political/ideological opponents. Conservatives, if you are not willing to die to keep California in the Union even knowing that it will help lead to an America dominated by liberals, you should support partition. The micro-states that would likely replace the Federal government would consist of petty chauvinists. (Long live the Norwegian Lutheran Farmers Republic of Lake Wobegon.) I can accept such intolerance as long as these microstates make no claim to ruling over anyone who does not wish to be part of their group. Since we are allowing all of our internal opponents to secede, we are not forced to claim that even our opponents are superior to foreigners. If you are not willing to accept the comically soft bigotry of micro-states, you certainly cannot accept a large national government, which cannot represent all of its citizens in good faith without coming to claim that they are superior to foreigners.     

Rev. James Lawson and the True Meaning of Pacifism

During the Korean War, Rev. James Lawson, a future Civil Rights leader, went to prison as a "conscientious objector" rather than serve. As someone involved in the clergy, he could have protected himself, but instead chose not to, in itself an act of protest. He argued, and in this I agree with him, that it was wrong to exempt clergymen or those studying for the job from the draft and that it was simply a means to buy off established religions by protecting their people. I certainly admire much of what Rev. Lawson would later do for the Civil Rights movement and, in practice, support non-violent tactics when dealing with private individuals protesting social and government ills. That being said we need to consider the true meaning of pacifism as a consistent ideology when practiced by the likes of Rev. Lawson.

First off, let us consider the very act of being a "conscientious objector" to the Korean War. Rev. Lawson took it upon himself to stand in the way of the United States government's efforts to protect South Korea from being overrun by the forces of Communist North Korea and China. If Rev. Lawson would have had his way with the United States government, South Korea would not be one of the leading technological innovators in the world today as well as a source for millions of new converts to various denominations of Christianity; he would have sentenced millions of people in South Korea to, like those in North Korea, starve to death in the world's largest maximum-security prison. Who knows to what extent people like Rev. Lawson bear a share of the blame for the millions of people still sentenced today to a living death in North Korea. (I do not know how someone sleeps with that on their conscience.) More importantly, by opposing a relatively justifiable war, out of an innate opposition to all war, Rev. Lawson had backed out of his covenantal obligations as a citizen. He grew up accepting the benefits of the United States government, a war-making institution but refused to follow through on his obligations when this war-making institution followed through with its foundational purpose and went to war. (Obviously, as a black man living in segregationist America, Rev. Lawson did not enjoy the full rights he deserved. As such it would have been justifiable for him to not serve until the United States lived up to its obligations to him and all blacks.) Rev. Lawson was not just expressing his opinion or even practicing civil disobedience against a law he found unjust. He was not just objecting to our involvement in Korea. He was challenging the very legitimacy of the United States government. What are governments if not an institution authorized to use violence? As such, Rev. Lawson was guilty of a passive, relatively harmless, but still quite real form of treason. I would not go so far as to have him executed, but it was certainly reasonable for him to do hard-time in prison.


While in prison, Rev. Lawson found himself threatened by the inmates and faced with the prospect of being raped. Realizing that he was not even safe in his own cell, he prepared to defend himself with a chair. This put him in a dilemma; how could he, someone who went to prison in order to avoid engaging in violence, justify using violence even to save himself from being raped.


It was at that point Lawson had one of his numinous experiences. It was as if he heard a voice explaining everything to him. Everything which had been so difficult suddenly became clear. The voice told him that he was not there of his own volition or because he had done something wrong. He had not sinned; if anything he was he was there because he had been sinned against. The voice explained his dilemma to him. "If something terrible happens to you, it's not you causing it, and what happens is not your fault. What happens would be outside your control. You are responsible for only one thing – above all you must not violate your own conscience. If something terrible happens it is because of them, not because of you. It is not about personal choice. That makes it one more thing you have to endure in order to be true to Him. It is part of the test He set out for you." When Jim Lawson heard that voice, his fear fell from him. He would not resort to physical violence to protect himself. He would endure. He prepared himself for the worst. (David Halberstam, The Children pg. 46-47.)

 In the end, nothing happened to Rev. Lawson. It is believed that one of the prisoners he befriended put the word out that Lawson was not to be touched.

One wonders what advice Rev. Lawson would have given if it had been his daughter threatened with rape. "Daughter, do not fight these men, not even with a can of mace. When these men corner you and you have nowhere to run, just submit to them and let them do what they will." Maybe Rev. Lawson could stand by his daughter's side while this is going on and read her the passages in Augustine's City of God where he argues that it is not an evil for a woman to be raped; as long as she is unwilling her soul remains undefiled and, as such it is irrelevant what happens to the body.

Loving your neighbor as you love yourself means that in order to love other people you have to start by loving yourself. As a child of God and a creature of reason, you have value. As such you are obligated to protect yourself even if it means turning to violence. Once you are obligated to value yourself, you are also obligated to value and protect every innocent person even if it means turning to violence.

Asperger Discrimination: Some Self Evaluation

One of my recent posts dealt with some of my reactions to being let go by the high school I was teaching at. I used an email sent by a member of the administration, which praised the job that I did for them even if I they would not be able to have me back as a launching pad to muse about the nature of discrimination and where one draws the line between saying that those with certain character traits are ineligible for a job and saying that members of certain minority groups are ineligible when the characteristic in question is closely related to a specific minority group. The example I gave was that of a black teacher. We need to be honest that integrating society and creating a more tolerant one is not a simple or painless task. Having a black teacher teach a white class is likely to create friction. A world in which blacks carry the burden of integration, of making sure that there is no friction and of having the right "touch" in dealing with students civil rights is one in which civil rights would never get off the ground. Every act of bigotry can be hid behind a smile and the claim that unfortunately the person fails to socially integrate himself. As an Asperger, I see myself as a member of a minority group and feel we should receive everything that society grants to other minority groups such as blacks and gays. Looking back at the post I can see how it could have been misread by people, not familiar with my thought processes, casually glancing at.

To be clear, I was not arguing that I had been discriminated against. I specially pointed out that, even in my black teacher scenario, it is not clear to me that our black teacher would or should win. It would be touch and go. I practice, I suspect, it would come down to the school being able to demonstrate that they are acting in good faith in dealing with blacks and the struggle with students was not simply an excuse or a more politically correct way of framing discrimination. This piece was also not meant as an attack on the school for daring to fire a teacher as "talented" as me. I specially said that I was very grateful to the administration for the opportunity. My whole argument is dependent on the fact that it was very kind of them to write me this letter. A person is never truly in a position to evaluate himself so I have no desire to argue one way or another as to whether I am a "good" teacher or not. I took the stance that overall I did a good job on all things subject to empirical evaluation since that was the school's stance and because it sets up the whole theoretical issue, which I wished to discuss.

My evaluation of myself is pretty much in keeping with how I think the administration saw me. I have a very strong background in the material and I am a good lecturer. I still need to work on my back and forths with students and my tendency to just wind myself up and speak for forty-five minutes straight. My ability to control a classroom is a major problem. I may love teaching and honestly care about the students in my classroom, but I certainly do not have an easy time relating to them. I am brash, loud, and students often find me intimidating. This leads to situations where issues that should have been easily defused blow up into major issues and reach the attention of administrators, by definition a losing situation for me. If I were an administrator, I would have questions about rehiring me since I am one more thing to worry about and a parent brought lawsuit waiting to happen. In the end I think I am a very good teacher for certain types of students. My ideal teaching job would be what Dr. Louis Feldman has at Yeshiva University teaching Classics to two students. I could be the quirky teacher at some college off to the side with his pack of students. This sort of job, of course, is rare in this day and age and is unlikely to come my way.

Any final judgment of my teaching comes down to a question of values. What is the most important part of teaching, being a fountain of knowledge for students to tap or someone that students like and avoids trouble?

Of Toilet Training and Equal Rights

Call my teaching philosophy reactionary conservative, but I am a believer in students coming to class on time and prepared. (Whether students should have to go to class is one thing. Once they are in class, let us conduct a proper one.) Being prepared means having pen and paper or a laptop to take notes. It also means being able, barring unforeseen accidents or emergencies, to sit for forty minutes without needing to leave to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. (When I gave double period lectures at Ohio State, I was careful to give a five minute break in middle). To my shock, I have learned from an experienced educator, whom I have the utmost respect for, that, as a matter of policy, one is supposed to grant female students, because of their special needs, unlimited bathroom privileges (even knowing that this privilege is being abused). This strikes at what I understand as the bargain of civil rights that, among other things, allows women into my classroom to get an education in the first place. 

Being given equal rights and being treated as an equal means taking on the responsibilities taken for granted by the rest of society. For example, as the Jews of Napoleon's Sanhedrin would point out, Jews, by taking on the privileges of being equal citizens, also take on the obligations of serving in the army, taking on socially "useful" trades and making the necessary "reforms" of their religion to remove any hatred or bias against their gentile countrymen. As I so often point out in my classes, Jews gaining equal rights was not simply a matter of gentiles becoming more liberal and finally agreeing to give Jews what they "deserved." There is a bargain being made here; this is not a simple offer and there might be good reason to turn down this Enlightenment offer of emancipation. The same thing applies to women. Women are now being given the opportunity to be equal citizens, go to school and get jobs. I think this is a good thing and fully support it. The flip side of this is that women are expected to take on the same responsibilities of men.

If I were teaching history in the year 1800 to an all-boys class, I would do so on the assumption that my students, barring serious emergencies, were capable of sitting in class for forty minutes without having to go to the bathroom. Those incapable of holding in their bladders are probably not fit to be in school and should probably go back to being serfs and working in the fields (where they will probably die of famine or the plague). It is interesting to note that early factory regulations had to include specific clauses telling adult male workers that they were not allowed to relieve themselves on the work floor. This was a generation of people raised on farms and used to being able to take care of their bodily functions at will. Toilet training is not something natural, but it is necessary for living in modern society.

Over the past two hundred years, we have had the women's rights movement and, largely as a result of this, I am now teaching a class in which there are women. As a John Stuart Mill feminist, I welcome girls into my class as "one of the guys." The same basic assumptions that I have about guys also apply to them though. It would not be an excuse for a girl to say that as a girl she has a "smaller brain," is intellectually inferior and therefore should automatically get a letter grade higher. (It is funny to read nineteenth-century literature and see women unashamedly recuse themselves as they are "mere weak women.") If she, as a girl, is intellectually inferior then we must admit that women's rights were a mistake and this girl should leave my class and go "back" to working in a kitchen and raising children. Similarly, a girl is only in my class in the first place because we assume that she can control her basic bodily functions. If she cannot then she has no business using her feminine situation as an excuse. On the contrary, if this is indeed a feminine problem and not just the general human laziness of one individual, she should acknowledge the failure of the women's movement and recuse herself to the kindergarten classroom or to where societies that have thought of women as simply large children have usually dumped them, the kitchen.

It should be noted that concerns over the female ability to control bodily functions are at the heart of women being exempt by the rabbis from various religious commandments. This "leniency" for women has, in practice, served to place women in a secondary position in that it relegates them to a position of outsiders. The man is taken as the norm and the female is the oddity to be worked into the system. The rabbinic formulation is that "women are exempt from time-bound commandments." It is taken as a given that these commandments are at the heart of normative Judaism and not extra duties to be placed on men.

It is perfectly plausible, if we are going to assume that women really are not capable of controlling their bodily functions and this is not just a matter of female students taking advantage of gullible male teachers, to say that girls should be taken out of mainstream schools. They could have their own schools, with classes they can come in and out of as it suits them; they could even take a week off once a month. We would not have to worry as to whether they are actually learning anything. Everyone would know that these were not real schools and were not meant to actually offer an education, but finishing schools meant to give "MRS" degrees. Even if this was the case, I would still wish that any girl who proved to be an exception to this rule would be allowed to attend a real school, with real classes, to get a real education. My classroom door would certainly be open for her.

An Old Speech of Mine on Affirmative Action

For those of you interested in what I really think about affirmative action, here is the text of a speech I gave at Yeshiva University back in 2003 as part of a contest. I ended up coming in fourth place, just missing out on winning prize money. This speech was given while the Supreme Court was hearing the Michigan cases of Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger on affirmative action. The argument I offer follows a similar line of reasoning to what I offered in regards to Aryan coffee. We cannot even begin to talk about a government interest in diversity unless we also admit a government interest in conformity in which case we are trapped into accepting segregation as at least having a plausible legitimacy.


A key corollary to the fourteenth amendment is title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. According to Title VI: No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." As Senator Ribicoff explained it: "Basically, there is a constitutional restriction against discrimination in the use of federal funds; and title VI simply spells out the procedure to be used in enforcing that restriction." This sentiment was endorsed by Justice Powell in the Bakke the decision. Bakke has recently come back into the public eye. This past month the Supreme Court has heard two cases involving the issue of Racial preferences in regards to University admissions: one involving the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy (Gratz v. Bollinger, 02-51), and one involving the University of Michigan's law school admissions policy (Grutter v. Bollinger 02-241). These are two very different cases. In Gratz, the undergraduate case, there is a point system, in which prospective students are given points based on such categories as where they live and how they scored on various tests. In one of these categories, twenty points are awarded to prospective students who are either athletes, come from impoverished backgrounds or are a part of specific minority groups. In Grutter, the law school admissions case, the University simply has a stated policy that it should tailor its admissions program in order to achieve a critical mass of minority students within its classes.

The argument in regards to these cases is not about whether Michigan is in violation of, at the very least the letter, of title VI. The ACLU, which has written an amicus curiae brief in support of the university, claims though, that Michigan's admissions policy is a compelling state interest since it enables the University to have a diverse student body. I ask on this; if the state, or the institutions that it funds, has the right, even the duty, to ignore title VI out of a compelling interest in diversity, as Michigan, the ACLU along with over sixty other organizations are claiming, then cannot the state also choose to ignore title VI out of other compelling interests? Diversity certainly is not the state's only compelling interest.

America, if you think about, is in a sense, for better or for worse, the great experiment in conformity. Crucial to American Civics is the notion that we are going throw Italians, Jews, Poles, Germans etc. together onto our golden streets and everybody is going to somehow turn into Americans. We generally call this phenomenon "the Melting Pot." If one can claim diversity to be a compelling state interest then certainly one can also claim that the venerable melting pot of conformity is also a compelling state interest.

Once states can get around Title VI by claiming a compelling interest in conformity then Title VI becomes absolutely meaningless. What would happen IF the University of South Carolina would decide that in keeping with its compelling interest in having a student body that conforms, the University will from now on tailor its admissions policy in a manner designed to avoid achieving a critical mass of minorities on its campus? What if South Carolina were to decide to give white applicants, along with athletes and students from impoverished backgrounds, an extra twenty points on their admissions scores? On what grounds could the University be legally stopped? Not Title VI, for the University can claim to have a compelling interest in ignoring title VI.

What the compelling state interest argument ignores is the fact that the body of Civil Rights legislation came about in order to get around the claim that the institutions of slavery and segregation were compelling state interests. The fourteenth amendment and title VI only make sense if we accept the words of Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter in the Plessy vs. Ferguson. "Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved." The colorblind constitution is the only for the just and free society to triumph over the claims of compelling state interest.

Porno Theaters and Aryan Coffee Shops: The Libertarian Case for Legalized Discrimination (Part III)

(Part I, II) 

This relatively recent redefinition of rights as protecting not just one's physical person, but one's own personal emotional well being, is one of the foundational hypocrisies of modern liberalism and a death blow to a free society. The moment we are allowed to bring non-empirical psychological suffering then all of a sudden I have a case against the sinful women of Nevada. It bothers me that such things are allowed in this country. I am kept awake at night worried about what sort of hurricanes my zealous patriarchal deity might bring to this country and if he will stop viewing us as his special chosen nation with the right to bomb other countries at will. Scott Lively will finally be able to do something about all the homosexual activity that bothers him and will be able to push through the sorts of laws that he has been helping pass in Uganda.

As John Stuart Mill understood, if liberty, as the right to pursue your own good in your own way as long as it does not interfere with the liberties of others, is to mean something, interference with the liberties of others, in essence harm, must be very narrowly understood. Living in a society, every action affects someone else and can thus open itself to the charge of harm. If harm is understood in the sense of causing psychological harm than all actions interfere with the liberties of others and therefore there ceases to be any such thing as pursuing your own good in your own way. In essence, there is no meaningful difference between modern liberals, with their psychological harm, and historic conservatism, which denied the principle of liberty to begin with. At least conservatives are not hypocritical enough to pretend that they are offering anything else but privileges for select groups.

From this perspective, a major plank of the civil rights movement collapses. School segregation ceases to be an inherent violation of civil liberties as long as there is equal funding. It would simply be the absurd and immoral attempt to maintain a racial version of medieval hierarchy in the modern age. Blacks attempting to demand service in white restaurants were not fighting for liberty. On the contrary, they were trespassing on the property of others in the attempt to force their values on other people and violate their right to property, association and the pursuit of happiness. Our legal system and federal government failed in their role as they chose to pursue a series of fake manufactured rights over real and legitimate ones.

Granted, I am hard-pressed to find a more deserving group for this to happen to. As all civil libertarians know, you protect the rights of those who do not deserve it, such as drug dealers, child molesters, and terrorists, knowing that this harms society. You do this because you would rather be in court defending drug dealers, child molesters, and terrorists than your child, your neighbor, or your best friend, with the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting on the bad side of the wrong public official.         

Make no mistake about it; we are paying a price for violating the civil liberties of segregationists and white supremacists, no matter how much I think we are better off for them getting what they "deserved." We have allowed the left to abuse the rights of others and it is not stopping with the "bad guys." Now we have a gay rights movement taking up the mantel and claiming group victimhood and the protection of their "right" to have their lifestyles validated by society through marriage. (Note that I support gay marriage on libertarian grounds as long as it is not considered a civil right.) Our debate on same-sex marriage has long since devolved from whether it is a good thing to whether someone can oppose it without being a bigot out to oppress others. By going to the courts and arguing for gay marriage on civil rights grounds, gay rights supporters have committed themselves to demonizing their opponents and using the power of government to force their values on other people. With hate crime legislation, this becomes all the more ominous. Will I lose my job or even any future theoretical children on the grounds that I am known to believe that gay sex is a sin like eating pork or, even worse, that I deny that sex can define people any more than eating and that therefore homosexuality is about as meaningful for our discourse of rights as pig eating?    

(To be continued …)

Porno Theaters and Aryan Coffee Shops: The Libertarian Case for Legalized Discrimination (Part II)

(Part I)

Before we continue, I think it is important to make it very clear that we are talking about discriminatory policies practiced by private businesses. Obviously, the government has an obligation under the fourteenth amendment to treat everyone equally regardless of race. This is not any different from religion. The government is not allowed to have any religion, but private citizens have the right to practice their religion and even discriminate based on it. I have the right to kick you out of my synagogue or even my house for believing that Jesus is the Messiah. Let us not be naïve as to the stakes. We are talking about whether the government should be able to stop private businesses from practicing discrimination. This would go for who must be served to even who can be hired. If the answer is no then you have knocked down a major pillar of modern civil rights legislation and have effectively blown a hole through modern liberalism. So, should I be allowed to stick a sign out in front of my store saying "no dogs, Jews, blacks, Scottish people or people whose last name begins with the letter K?" 

When I have raised this issue of the right of private businesses to discriminate based on race with people the immediate objection is that racism, in contrast to porn, causes harm. This quickly becomes indefensible to any degree of seriousness. The "kind decent peaceful" white supremacists enjoying my Aryan coffee are not lynching anyone. No one, no matter their skin color, has any natural right to a cup of coffee or a place to sit and drink it. The only reason why we enjoy these things is because, due to the market, it is in the self-serving interest of someone to provide it in exchange for compensation. If it is not in anyone's interest then no coffee. As a businessman, who mainly caters to white folk, it is likely in my economic self-interest to lose the business of one undesirable minority (either explicitly with a sign or by privately telling the person that he is not welcome) in order to maintain one's larger cliental.

Some people have countered by saying that they would be willing to accept discrimination by small establishments that only deal in relatively unimportant things like coffee. Large national franchises, though, like Starbucks should not be allowed to discriminate. Furthermore, critical industries like health care, real estate, and car dealerships should also be forced to do business with anyone. The logic being that these industries are, unlike coffee, necessary for the day to day functioning of society and therefore the people who work in them have entered a pact with the public to serve the public good.

Why should it be a problem if we have a franchise of racist coffee shops? There are people who wish to engage in their pursuit of happiness by looking at naked women. Let bigots across the country practice their racist pursuit of happiness by going to my Aryan coffee shop in whatever city they live in. Just as Starbucks competes for the social justice dollar with their green and fair-trade coffee, let them also compete for the racist dollar with Aryan coffee. As for the issue of health care, car dealerships, and real estate, why can't they practice discrimination too? If real estate can deal in porno theaters why can't they deal in racism? Find me a place in the country where there is only one provider of health care, one car dealership and one real estate business, particularly in our internet age. Even if there was such a place, this would merely create the need for an alternative that the free market could easily provide. As I see it, we are doing blacks and all opponents of racism a favor by allowing discrimination. I do not want to do business with racists. If business owners could come out and be openly racist then we would know who we don't want to be doing business with. The fact that such businesses are so important to society does not mean that they owe some sort of debt to society to be nice. On the contrary, it means that society owes them and should be grateful for the service they provide and keep its morals to itself. 

The final and most critical argument that people will point to is the psychological harm done through discrimination. Obviously, the black man or Jew who finds himself unable to get a cup of Aryan coffee and finds himself staring through the window at our group of white supremacists drinking their coffee and having a racist good time feels dehumanized by this. If we wish for such people to take part in society as equal citizens then the government must step in and demand that they be allowed to get a cup of coffee anywhere like anyone else. One of the fundamental shifts in American law over the past century has been this willingness to accept such psychological suffering into the equation. This has been at the foundation of much of modern civil rights law. Now it no longer matters if someone is not directly being held back from his legal rights at gunpoint, most famously in the Brown case that ended school segregation. Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP presented the Warren court with psychological studies demonstrating that (big shocker) segregation negatively affected the self-esteem of black children. The court accepted this argument and ruled that separate was by definition unequal even if no direct harm was caused.

(To be continued …)

A Religious Defense of a Secular State Not Enforcing Biblical Punishment: My Response to Dr. Lively II

We have a second exchange of more series emails between Dr. Scott Lively and me. Dr. Lively continues his challenge to my commitment to biblical law in that I seem to be willing to let certain verses in Leviticus slide when they do not suit my liberal beliefs. There is a certain irony to this in that, as the Orthodox Jew, I take all of Leviticus very seriously, including the passages that deal with pork. I counter by using Augustine's model of two cities to formulate a religious argument for a secular state.


Mr. Chinn,


Regarding Igra's take on Shaw, I was quite clear that I don't know enough about the subject to hold a firm opinion.  It is fair to assume that you have not read the book or investigated its claims in which case it is unfair if not unscholarly to dismiss them out-of-hand.  Regarding Igra himself, if you are basing your opinion of him on Germany's National Vice, I can assure you that I have independently validated most of his assertions using mainstream sources of the period and overtly "gay" sources.  He was sensationalistic in style, but not factually wrong on most points. 

Regarding your claim to be a classic liberal, I must disagree.  Your correspondence leans much closer to the snide arrogance of the New Left than the dignified civility of classic liberalism.  

Regarding your claim to be a faithful Orthodox Jew, I believe my Orthodox friends would disagree.  By the standard you have articulated G-d Himself should be considered a "homophobe" for singling out the Sodomites of Canaan for special punishment not meted out to any other group.   In my observation, the Orthodox position acknowledges Scripture's repeated characterization of this lifestyle as an abomination, whereas your uninformed position, obviously influenced by popular culture, minimizes what G-d specially emphasized.  As for my specialization in this field of study, you should know from my writings that I oppose all forms of sex outside of marriage equally, but I focus on homosexuality because it is the only form with a global advocacy movement demanding political power and control for its practitioners.    
Regarding Uganda, my advice to the Ugandan Parliament was to go pro-active in support of marriage and the natural family to inoculate the population against promiscuity in all of its forms, and regarding homosexuality specifically I urged an emphasis on therapy, not punishment.  I did not advocate for the death penalty, nor did any of my teachings provide a reasonable rationalization for it.  The "gay" and leftist press are misrepresenting the facts for political advantage as they always do.  As for Proposition 8, your investment in its importance as a bulwark against "gay" power shows a gross misreading of the state of the culture.  Prop 8 will not stop their agenda, even if it is upheld by the 9th Circuit (a highly unlikely event in any case -- I have personally argued a pro-family case before this court and learned just how fully it is committed to the "gay" cause).  Absent a dramatic political shift of national power into the hands of people who believe like I do, you will suffer persecution for your view that homosexuality is a sin, as will I to a likely much greater extent. 
It seems rather odd that you can foresee the real possibility of persecution from them for your tepid opposition, while at the same time arguing that they do not represent a serious threat to society. That's a rather bizarre disconnect, don't you think?  They're seeking fascistic control over the speech of others but they're not really dangerous?  Sort of reminiscent of the attitude of the German Jews in the 20s, isn't it?  You really should read The Pink Swastika. 
Regarding your claim to be consistent in your principles, I don't know enough about you to say.  I suspect, however, based on our short exchange, the degree to which your ideas accommodate the politically correct sensibilities of the day (despite your claim to orthodoxy), and the "show-offish" way you've treated me on your blog that you are not. Nevertheless, as a Christian I am willing, within reason, to tolerate both your erroneous views and your demeaning tone to show you that I care about you as a person. 
I do happen to agree with some of what you wrote in your next-to-last paragraph, which I concede does reflect a more classic liberal perspective.  I also believe in freedom of choice (within reason) and would be happy to tolerate a "gay" subculture so long as it does not work to mainstream itself at the expense of family-centered society.  I also support religious freedom, but only as the concept was known by the Founders i.e. tolerance for all who acknowledge the existence of G-d.  Inclusion of atheism as a "religion" toward which government must be neutral is a 20th century concept that breaks the entire model.  Scott Lively


My Response:

Dr. Lively,

You are correct in assuming that I have not done a thorough scholarly investigation of Ingra's work nor of the claim that George Bernard Shaw wrote the Protocols. He may very well have had some evidence up his sleeve that I am unaware of. There are lots of claims that I have not given serious consideration to. For example, that it was a body double of Julius Caesar, who was assassinated and that Caesar and Cleopatra fled to the new world where they met up with the ten lost tribes and founded a race of uber-Indians, whose history was written on gold tablets buried in a hill in upstate New York. I may very well be the victim of an Augustian conspiracy to cover up this truth. The historical method upon which I rest my sanity requires that I dismiss any person making such claims as insane and be willing to sign them over to a padded cell and a lifetime supply of happy pills.

The Old Testament outlines a set of personal practices and a theocratic form of government designed to foster a community of people who keep God's law. The God of the Old Testament has 365 prohibitions, one of which happens to be against homosexuality. This biblical theocracy has many rules with extreme punishments for those who violate them. A priest who violates the most minor rule of the Temple cult is guilty of blasphemy. In a theocracy, blasphemy is, by definition, treason against the state and therefore possibly subject to the death penalty. Similarly, sexuality is a type of religious ritual subject to "Temple cult" stringencies. As such someone who goes outside the transcribed forms of sexuality, regardless of whether there is anything bad per se about this action, commits an act of blasphemy and therefore is potentially subject to the death penalty. Just as it is logically conceivable that God would have commanded us to sacrifice a cow for the paschal lamb, God could have also decided to permit us to engage in homosexual relations. In the universe we live in we testify to following God's command in our sexual activity by engaging in heterosexual sex within marriage and refraining from homosexual sex. (Whether homosexuality goes against "nature" or not is irrelevant.)

We do not live under a biblical theocracy and therefore lack the ability to punish people for violating biblical prohibitions, whether it is eating pork chops or homosexual sex. Personally, I think it is a good thing that we are not living under a theocracy and I have no intention, in practice, of trying to bring one about. On the contrary, I seek to live under a government that is completely "secular." By this I mean a government that does nothing to promote or prohibit any religious activity and devotes itself solely to protecting people from direct physical harm. We must recognize that, to go back to the Augustinian political model that is at the foundation of much of my thought, we live in a "fallen" world. As the Old Testament provides ample testimony for, people as a whole are not capable of living up to God's law. Furthermore, I would be hard-pressed to find "men of God" whom I would trust to tend his flock. All the people that I might conceivably trust would laugh at me and tell me to stop bothering them if I ever asked them to step up to the task. This leaves us with limiting the political state to building the earthly city. A properly functioning earthly city would create a large supply of virtuous and rational citizens. It is from this group of citizens that we can hope to recruit a flock of citizens for the heavenly city.
I am glad you are consistent about opposing all forms of extra-marital sex. Would you not agree that any church or synagogue that chooses to wink and nod at the transgressions of heterosexual teenagers should be consistent and look the other way at what the committed homosexual couple may or may not be doing in the privacy of their own home? We should not have a "forgive me father, I slept with my girlfriend this week again."

As of now the government of Uganda engages in coercive behavior to stop people from engaging in homosexual activity and is posed to implement even greater levels of coercion. Even to force homosexuals to undergo therapy would be physical coercion. It should be noted that I understand physical coercion fairly narrowly. For example, I would have no problem if a public school teacher put up a cross in her classroom and told her students about accepting Jesus as her personal savior over vacation.

I certainly do not see Proposition 8 as a cure-all. I do believe though that if we cannot win even on this issue then we are in serious trouble. While I believe that the modern left fully intends to persecute people like you and eventually maybe even me and do not trust them, I do not trust people like you to allow people like me to openly live our non-Jesus lifestyles and negatively influence society. My money is on trying to create a strong political center of classical liberals whose religious values support a secular government; this is what Izgad is all about. We offer a consistent set of principles that will allow our entire political spectrum to live together in peace.

To be clear, I do not view homosexuals even proactive ones as a threat. I see arrayed before me the full might of the modern left, who have destroyed the concept of rights and have reduced it to political spoils for chosen useful groups. In essence, they are armed with a checkbook full of blank checks for persecution. Homosexual activists are simply a group that has managed to end up as one of the privileged groups. It could just have easily been Mormon polygamists as the privileged group and homosexuals having their children snatched by government agents. (I do fear a right-wing theocracy, but I believe that the left is culturally in a better position to stop this than the right is for the reverse. As such I see the left as the more immediate threat.)

You say that you are willing to tolerate a gay subculture as long as it does not challenge mainstream culture. Part of tolerance is the willingness to allow groups you dislike to compete in the public arena and even win. For example, I oppose Israel's anti-missionary laws. Christians should be allowed to travel to Israel and try to convince people to believe in Jesus to their heart's content. Similarly, I support homosexuals not only being allowed to practice their chosen lifestyles with other consenting adults, but they should be allowed to take part in the public sphere and make their case to society at large. I have no problem with gay pride parades as long as they do not violate any local profanity laws. Gay advocacy groups are fine. I do not object to anyone making the case to me or my adult children that homosexuality should not be considered a sin or even that sodomy is a pleasurable activity that I should try some time. (Yes I believe in the right to offer people drugs.)

As I often point out to people, the Enlightenment model of tolerance was tolerance for all people who belonged to an established faith community or believed in a supreme being. I follow John Stuart Mill and offer tolerance for everyone as long as they can live within the law and not cause any physical harm. I am willing to give individual atheists the benefit of the doubt and assume they are moral individuals, even if I have my doubts about the ability of an atheist society to remain moral. There is also the experience of Orthodox Jews in Germany in the 19^th century. German law insisted that everyone belong to established religious communities. This was a problem for the Orthodox who desired to break away from the Reform. In the 1870s the law was changed to allow secularists to not belong to any community. This created the channel for the Orthodox to also gain the right to dissent.

Sincerely,
Benzion N. Chinn

Mental Capacity and Autism Rights

I would like to clarify an issue from my earlier post on autism rights. I argued that the concept of rights, by definition would only apply to those on the higher end of the autism spectrum:

Any discussion of rights, by definition, only applies to people who have reached a certain base-line of intellectual self-sufficiency. So autism rights, by definition, only apply to autistics on the higher end of the spectrum. If you are capable of reading this piece and understand what I am saying then you can rest assure that you pass the threshold. A completely different discourse would be needed for those on the lower end of the spectrum, one based on care and charity.

This statement has caused offense to a number of people and I apologize for that. Part of the problem is that I am proceeding from a very different understanding of rights which causes me to use the word “right” in a different fashion from that of other people. Most people, coming from the perspective of modern liberalism, use rights in a very open-ended fashion. Rights are supposed to make someone human, they are meant to grant people meaning in their lives and solve their problems. For example, if homosexuals find themselves unable to marry their partners they are being robbed of some right. Or if blacks are unable to advance in the same proportion as other groups it must be because some right has been violated.

For me, rights are something more specific. When I think of rights I think of life, liberty, and property. An extension of these rights, and a necessary protection for them, is the ability to take part in government. By this I mean the right to engage in such actions as running for political office, voting in elections, taking part in the justice system by serving on a jury, and serving in the military. To safeguard all of these things we possess civil rights as weapons in our arsenal. There are two particularly important ones that should be mentioned. First, there is our freedom of speech, which protects us on a day-to-day basis. Second, of greater importance though more for extreme situations, there is the right to bear arms. Private citizens have the constitutional right to possess the sort of firearms necessary to wage, if need be, an armed insurrection against the government.

The right to life belongs to all human beings no matter their mental capability. This right, while important, is, for the most part, outside of our political discourse. I have not heard anyone suggest that people on the autism spectrum be put into cattle cars and shipped off to gas chambers. Furthermore, this right is passive; it does not allow you to engage in anything proactive. Other people are not allowed to murder autistics, but what can autistics do?

There is the issue of the long-term elimination of autistics in the event that a genetic test can be designed for fetuses. For those who view rights as something that belongs to groups, this becomes a right to life issue. I view rights as something that belongs to individuals and I believe that fetuses do not count as human beings, certainly for the purpose of having rights. Because of this, I recognize that we do not have any means, through the government, to stop mothers from aborting autistic fetuses. All we can do is wage a social campaign to convince people to not abort autistic fetuses. I have a friend who point-blank told me that she would abort a child that she knew was going to be autistic. She would not object to having an Asperger child like me, but she grew up with a traditionally autistic sister and she would not wish to go through that experience as a parent. I can challenge this friend whether she can say she really loves her sister; if she really loved her sister she would rather have gone through all the difficulties she had than not have had the sister at all. I suspect this will be a losing battle and we may, as tragic as it may be, see the elimination of autism. I support personal autonomy and I am willing to fall on my sword to protect this ideal; this is what it means to be an idealist.

Moving away from the right to life, we are left with the rights of liberty, property, participation in government, and civil rights. In a sense, liberty is passive; you are protected from being wrongfully imprisoned. That being said it also includes the active right to make decisions in one’s life, to pursue one’s own good in one’s own way as long as one does not interfere with the liberties of others. The moment you bring active rights into play you have to consider who has the mental capacity to pursue such rights. J. S. Mill said point-blank, at the beginning of On Liberty, that nothing he was about to say was meant to apply to children, the mentally handicapped, and, for argument's sake, savages living outside of civilization. 

When I was a child, as much as I thought it was unjust, my parents ran right over my “rights” to not bathe, stay home from school, stay up beyond their arbitrary bedtime and not eat my vegetables. They even spanked me and put me in time out without the benefit of a trial by my peers. (While this may sound childish, I was the sort of child with the political awareness to try for such a constitutional approach.) So should autistics have the liberty to make personal decisions in their lives like whether they should be institutionalized, allowed to live at home or by themselves? My answer is that it depends on the ability of the individual autistic. I am an adult and I have the mental ability to understand and make decisions regarding my liberty and others can understand what these decisions are. As such, I should have the right to exercise these liberties and my decisions about my personal liberties should be respected. If my parents wished to commit me to an institution or force me to come home and the government went along with this it would be a wrongful violation of my liberty. My parents would not be able to use the argument that I am an Asperger since that is a legitimate mode of thinking; nor could they argue that I do not eat enough vegetables, go to bed at an early enough hour or use language that they did not approve of as these would also be legitimate lifestyle choices. Now there are people on the autistic spectrum, even many adults, who are not capable of making such decisions. Such people cannot in any meaningful sense be said to possess liberty and should be left to the care of their legal guardians.

The same applies to the higher rights such as participation in government and civil liberties. All of these things, as active liberties, require that an individual has the mental capacity to make a meaningful decision. It is not even enough that a person says the words, there has to be some sort of intent behind them. Furthermore, those intentions must, by some means, be able to be communicated to society at large. A person who cannot do this is doomed to being a ward of society, without the ability to take on the role of full citizens.

A useful example is that of the deaf. Today it would sound completely ludicrous to say that a deaf person cannot be a CEO of a company, and serve in the military. (There may be restrictions about on the deaf serving though I doubt they would stand up against a determined lobbying effort particularly if resources were offered to get around the disability.) Who would object to a deaf person becoming the president of the United States? That being said, in the nineteenth century there were few resources available for deaf people and society lacked the ability to effectively educate them. For all intents and purposes, this doomed the deaf to a lifetime of being wards of society, of little use to anyone, and unable to take on the role of active citizens with all the rights that it entails. Now, because of advances in technology and in education, the deaf are capable, just like everyone else, of being active citizens and society has been blessed with this beautiful new deaf culture arising in its midst.

I see the same thing for the autistic community. Right now, there are many autistics, particularly at the "higher end of the spectrum," perfectly capable of being fully active citizens. It is important that such people be supported and that they are allowed to fully take advantage of their rights to make personal decisions, to handle property, to take an active role in government, and to use their civil liberties. That being said, there are many on the autism spectrum, particularly on the "lower end of the spectrum," who do not have this ability. For such people, it is meaningless to talk about them having rights. This is not to say that they should be thrown to the wolves or refused medical care. They are wards of society and must be cared for as such. I hope that with further improvements in technology and education we will find more and more people on the autism spectrum with the ability to take on the role of citizens and will no longer be wards of society. This will make for a stronger and more vibrant autistic community and will benefit society at large.