Many thanks to Stephen L. Hall for this post.
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A little over a week ago, I was feeling a little bit of burnout, trying to think of topics about which to write. This week, on the drive home, I had so many various ideas for posts rattling through my head, all of them somewhat related and connected and all of them requiring lengthy diatribes. So to sort out the mental chaos, I thought I would take this opportunity to write out the complexities. So instead of my normal shallow, light-hearted fluff I’d like to discuss something more fundamental.
It is . . . difficult . . . to talk to people on the other side. It is easy to simply think that they are stupid, but more often than not it is not that they are stupid but that they are foolish and lack reason. It is worthwhile to ask what they think. It is meritorious to try to understand why. Sometimes, the most important question . . . is how. How do leftist think?
Let me start by examining the very favorite argument and topic of the left, that ridiculous non-sense of “civil rights”, more particularly let us narrow the focus to a single issue of racism lest we be distracted. It is important because it is the left’s singular proclamation of moral and intellectual superiority; and as vacuous and empty as a hollowed out egg shell. So, how exactly do they get away with their foolishness, and more relevant, how do such fools ensnare the unwary?
“To know thy enemy is to know thyself.” – Hamlet. So what exactly is their argument for “civil rights”? We don’t often ask this question because it is so pervasive that it really feels like it ought to be common knowledge. But familiarity breeds contempt, and because this issue is kept constantly in front of everyone, as with every leftist cause, people really do not stop to question the very nature of the issue itself.
One should seek to ask the basic questions, such as, “Is discrimination good or bad?” No one asks that. Why? The leftist would laugh at the mere asking of such a question and immediately think the questioner stupid for even asking such a question. There was a man in history who built his reputation upon asking just such questions. His name was Socrates. Leftists would have called him stupid as well.
The leftist refrain is simple, and simplistic: “Racism, to discriminate against someone solely based upon the color of their skin, is wrong.” Thus is their claim to moral and intellectual superiority. But is it?
Let us first take apart that statement. Race is not merely the color of a person’s skin. It is this basic type of reductio ad absurdum, reduction to absurdity, which is at the root of all leftist foolishness. Because it is rather obvious to any reasoning person that the mere coloration or hew of a person’s skin is hardly a rational reason to discriminate against someone. One may as readily discriminate against someone because of the color of their eyes, or the color of their hair.
(Make no mistake, I recant not one word of my prior, frequent, and most astute, assertions of the nature of blondes as evil incarnate.)
By reducing the concept of race to a shallow, one dimensional, caricature of the word to mere color they also reduce the very argument to an absurdity. They mock and attempt to diminish any intellectual adversary in the process. To make a distinction or choice upon such a revised concept is obviously foolish, but is it wrong? They assume that answer without any thought or consideration that what is foolish must be wrong.
Have you noticed the obvious yet? That they have avoided the question entirely? The question was about discrimination. It was not about hue or even racism.
But every single issue the left reduces to the most absurdly simplistic sound-byte purely for the consumption of the low information voters. Then they conflate and compare that simplistic sound-byte to some other issue that they have won in the past. Don’t support homosexual marriage or gender identity bathrooms, then you are a new racist from the Jim Crow days. Don’t support open border immigration, then it’s because your racism against black people. What? They aren’t black, Spain was European? Well they aren’t nordic white, so they are “people of color” therefore you’re still a racist. A whole lot of people of European ancestry have been magically made non-white just to push their conflation of anti-immigration with racism.
By linking and confusing two unrelated concepts together and simultaneously reducing the linked concept to absurd non-sense, they poison the other concept, in this case discrimination. To show the absurdity of their reason, let us make a different association.
Would it be wrong to discriminate against a prodigal? A truant? A slacker? Is discrimination then wrong? “It is wrong to discriminate”, they say. They would say that that was not what they meant, but it is exactly what they say.
It is the conflation of the word “discrimination” with an absurdly simplified definition of race as merely a color that the left combines into a mantra, dogma not to be questioned. Such mantras they repeat ad nauseam and employ as a weapon and insult to any who would even broach the issue. Such absurdities the left mistakenly conceives as a principle, and will even mistakenly use that very word.
They accept it as a kind of absurd tautology, what Thomas Hobbes would call a false doctrine. That is essentially what it is, a doctrine of leftist faith, they mistake for reasoned principles. Because it is doctrinal, and not reasoned, it is not subject to question. To question one’s faith places the questioner in a disquiet state, known to sociologists as anomie. It is only from that state that a person can begin to question their ideals, which is why they do not want to hear opposing opinions lest they question their faith.
Having thus tainted the word “discrimination” by marrying it to racism, and reducing the concept of race to such an absurd foolish notion as mere color, they look upon any who oppose anything they do as supporters of the definitions they project. Further, they conflate every issue with their false doctrine.
Differences in sex or gender are immediately as shallow as color. Differences in religion are as shallow and meaningless as the colors in a crayon box. Sexual preferences are just another silly difference like color. All issues are immediately analogous to color. All who would see differences , discriminate, therefor are bad people.
That is the second conflation, guilt by association is used to attack anybody who would oppose them or any idea contrary to what the left wants. This associative guilt can be a paint of known associates, past affiliations, or even vague similarities. Directed in a coordinated attack against a single opponent it becomes difficult to defend against the rampant slander of the left’s character assassination.
This is the reason that the left concentrates so much on control of the message through control of the media, of films, of education. Character assassination through guilt by association only works if there is no dissenting or conflicting views permitted.
In this way they can be selective in their attacks by not associating guilt with their friends and allies. David Duke was once associated with the KKK, and the left reminds you of that every time he makes an appearance. Robert Byrd was once associated with the KKK, but that almost never comes up, and if it does you are reminded that people change and it was a long time ago. The Democrat party was the party of segregation, Jim Crow, and the rebellion, but the Republicans are always guilty by association no matter how tenuous, the left constantly distanced no matter how much direct association they actually had.
Mindless phrases like “hate speech” and “hate crimes” are not merely non-sense, they are projected guilt by association again linking back to their favorite slander of discrimination.
