The arguments over “thick vs. thin,” humanitarian vs.”brutalist” libertarianism seem to be quite a distraction away from the more important argument of the State vs. liberty, in my view. I know equality is important, that is, equality under the law, but I don’t understand why some people are attempting to infiltrate the more politically-correct form of egalitarianism into libertarianism.
On his blog, left-libertarian Philosophy Professor Roderick T. Long has announced an upcoming Molinari Society Symposium on “Libertarianism and Privilege.” Long writes that “‘privilege’ has become the default model for most of the Left’s critical discussion of structural oppression, resistance, and challenges to social justice. Critical discourse today recognizes many forms of structural social privilege, including white privilege, male privilege, and privilege based on heterosexuality, gender identity, and economic or political class.”
While he does note that “Libertarianism has been described both as essentially an opposition to privilege, and as essentially a rationalization of privilege,” in the past Long has insisted on making feminism and egalitarian social equality a part of libertarianism, and now wants to “reclaim” the term libertarian with the added egalitarian aspects as its “default meaning.”
Well, having that kind of constructive discussion in a Symposium should be helpful, I suppose. But I am not sure whether there really is that much “white privilege” or “male privilege” in our society anymore.
It just seems that the cultural influence by the Left has turned things upside down and turned the society into one of intolerance, political correctness and reverse discrimination.
And just how valid is this “male privilege” stuff now anyway, given the anti-male discrimination, oppression and feminization of America, especially in the schools?
The female-dominated government schools have been banning dodge ball, omitting recess play time, and suspending or arresting little boys who draw pictures of a gun, as well as putting the kids on psychiatric drugs to repress their independence. By college the helicopter moms call their boys every night and argue with the professors over the boys’ grades.
And then there’s the college dorm and classroom “Two Minutes Hate” against males (and white people), the initiation ritual called “Tunnel of Oppression.” Here, the white students are indoctrinated to believe how privileged they are and what “racists” they are because they are white. And the male students are told about the “rape culture,” in which they inherently have the guilt of a rapist, simply because they are male.
Yes, this is the mentality today in what is considered “academics.” The more serious offenses perpetrated by these asinine academic activists include attempts to expel or convict young men of “rape” that actually isn’t rape according to the traditional legal definition, and in fact when, as libertarian feminists have noted, there is no such thing as a “rape culture” in the first place.
To make matter worse, many of the younger people now do not seem to even understand what actually is a “sexual assault.” (Thanks to the government schools, of course, which no longer teach youngsters how to read and comprehend concepts and how to think and analyze critically.)
Now, this is not to trivialize when actual incidents of actual rape or attempted rape occur, on or off college campuses. The true libertarian solution to those actual crimes is to recognize the individual’s right to self-defense and right to bear arms. But sadly, the feminists tend to side with the disarmament crowd, thus advocating making women more vulnerable by legally disarming them and making them defenseless.
And libertarians should be more concerned not that some men are allegedly privileged or are sexists but that some people are being falsely accused and even expelled or convicted of crimes they did not commit.
And regarding “white privilege” and racial issues, will the Symposium discuss Attorney General Eric Holder’s dropping the DOJ’s open-and-shut case against the Philadelphia black activists accused of intimidating and threatening white voters on 2008 election night? And what about Barack Obama’sreferring to his white grandmother as a “typical white person”? Or Obama’s wanting the schools to refrain from disciplining black students?
But in addition to discussing “white privilege” and “male privilege,” will the “Libertarianism and Privilege” Symposium also be discussing affirmative action privilege?
Affirmative action gives special advantages to some people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, or other superficial characteristics that have nothing to do with their achievement or qualifications, at the expense of discriminating against some other people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, etc. Thus, affirmative action is not only a privilege, but a discrimination-based privilege that goes against the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy that people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
But I don’t want to suggest that only black people (and other minorities) have benefited from affirmative action. Take Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, who benefited from Harvard Law School’s affirmative action policy of hiring more women to the faculty, despite her questionable qualifications at the time. And further, while she is clearly a white person, she has also benefited from affirmative action at Harvard Law School based on her claiming to be part Native American. A very small part. Some people allege that the paleface did so fraudulently, in fact.
Regarding the Harvard Law School and affirmative action controversies, perhaps libertarians ought not be discussing “libertarianism and privilege” as much as they should be suggesting that government subsides and research grants be removed from Harvard and all other universities, as such money is first taken from workers and producers by force or coercion, a very un-libertarian method of funding.
And several years ago, by the way, some Harvard professors, including law professor Lawrence Tribe (as well as other Cambridge elitists such as Julia Child) signed a NIMBY petition to oust a school of mostly black kids from the limousine liberals’ Brattle Street neighborhood. So, a lot of people have their biases and prejudices. As Fred Reed would say, “So what?”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is Hispanic, had in the past stated, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
So she thinks that white males wouldn’t make decisions as good as hers. So what?
Before Sotomayor was appointed to the Supreme Court, she had described herself as a “product of affirmative action,” having been accepted to Princeton University and Yale Law School even though she had lower scores on the standardized tests than her other classmates.
Sotomayor claimed that those tests were examples of “cultural bias,” despite lack of evidence of such assertions.
But we do have evidence of these privileged bureaucrats’ ideological biases. One can see that they clearly are not objective jurists.
And the Supreme Court’s alleged reputation as reining in Big Government is a myth as well, as most of their decisions are biased toward the State, the expansion of government and police power, and against the individual. This is the kind of “bias” that libertarians should be concentrating on, and the undeserved privilege given to fools toward aiding and abetting the government’s criminality is what libertarians should be discussing at these Symposiums.
The totalitarian-minded Justices of the high court conclude cases with decisions as though they are saying, for example, “If cops smell marijuana in your home and hear you flush the toilet, then of course the cops have a right to criminally break into your home without a warrant.” And the Justices also have asserted that everyone arrested for non-arrestable “offenses” such as walking a dog without a leash can be strip-searched and anal-searched for drugs or weapons. After all, a jaywalker might attack a jail guard with a concealed pen knife, and he might be hiding drugs up his rectum, and he might be a terrorist.
So, according to the “originalists” of the high court, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution contain exceptions for “drugs” and “terrorism”!
And the overly privileged Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the approval of the Affordable Care Act, after changing his mind (Hmmm. I wonder what could have done that?), incoherently opining that the government has the constitutional authority to order us to buy health insurance.
But now we have a Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, who would dismiss as “foolish” the possibility of the Supreme Court even considering the constitutionality of NSA warrantless wiretapping, while the high court’s refusal to even hear the appeal of NDAA due process-free indefinite detention of innocents shows what fascists or total fools (or both) these people really are.
I think that a Symposium on “Libertarianism and Privilege” should include discussion of those nine lettered fascists whose ultimate authority rules our lives. These privileged backstabbers are a despicable bunch. They were when they rubber-stamped FDR’s power grabs, and they are now as well.
These are the true unjustly-privileged ones, and we can see that having them as our ultimate judicial decision-makers is pointless and irrational.
Now, I understand the concern that some libertarians have that some women make less than some men, that some workers are exploited by their employers, and that some people are racists. But those are not libertarian issues. Libertarianism and egalitarianism are two separate philosophies and movements.
Libertarians ought to be spending more time concerned with the police state, Obama’s executive power grabs, the Federal Reserve’s destruction of our money, and the government’s war on journalists, whistleblowers and the truth.
