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Victim Shock Troops
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. — George Washington
Until almost literally the day before yesterday, it was universally acknowledged that religious faith and expression were bedrock American freedoms — enshrined in the Constitution, protected in law, and honored in custom. But now, because the left has been victorious in convincing the elites that upholding traditional marriage is low bigotry, religious freedom will have to yield.
Not all religious freedom though. Just last month the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Elauf v. Abercrombie, which concerned a young Muslim woman who was denied employment because she wore a headscarf. Abercrombie has a policy against headwear. The argument turned, as it should in our republic, on how Abercrombie and others should handle the delicate matter of religious garb. Should the employer ask, and possibly commit ethnic and racial profiling, or should the employee be under an obligation to volunteer that his/her appearance was dictated by religion? Such are the cases we navigate in a nation that respects individual conscience and also seeks to avoid the appearance or reality of religious discrimination.
Conservatives would probably side with Ms. Elauf because they respect religious liberty. Progressives would favor her too, but for a different reason — because Muslims are among the groups that can (at least in the liberal imagination) be defined as victims. Victim status alone determines the equities in every dispute. If a halal caterer declined to service a gay wedding (which they almost certainly would, if asked), progressives would spiral into confusion and doubt. Which victim group is superior?
Victim status is the only prism through which progressives see American life. Their intellectually stunted thinking goes like this: In the beginning there was discrimination against blacks and we saw that it was bad. And then there was discrimination against women and we said “Just as it is wrong to discriminate against blacks, it is wrong to discriminate against women.” And then there was discrimination against Asians, Native Americans, LGBTs, and the “undocumented.” In each case, and God (excuse the expression) knows how many to come, the argument is that the analogy holds.
But it doesn’t. There is no analogy in American history to the treatment of blacks. No other group was the victim of centuries of slavery, abuse, rape, displacement, cheating, denigration, and legalized second-class status. As the New York Times’ Ross Douthat noted, “both Jim Crow and the means we used to destroy it are, well, legally and culturally extraordinary.” That’s exactly right. There is no analogizing the black experience to other groups. To extirpate the anti-black virus, we had to give enormous and even dangerous power to the federal government, trample upon people’s rights, regulate voting in all of the southern states, and much more.
The power we gave the state to fight anti-black discrimination should have been seen as a necessary evil to cope with a unique malice. Instead, for progressives, it was like sharks getting a scent of blood. With victimhood comes power!
And so they argued, ludicrously, that women were just like American blacks, persecuted for centuries by “sexism,” and needing affirmative action, unlimited abortion, set asides, lawsuits, and a school curriculum designed to remake the male sex in a new image to repair the damage.
Sex roles changed due to technology (the pill and labor saving devices) and increasing wealth (which permitted smaller families). We can cheer or lament these changes, but in no reasonable universe is it possible to compare relations between men and women with the black experience — a victim class and a victimizer, discrimination and contempt on one side and suffering and humiliation on the other.
And so it went with every new victim group, none of which was comparable to blacks. The left decides who is a sympathetic victim (transgenders yes, Ayaan Hirsi Ali no) and in every case the opposition must be not just defeated but crushed, silenced, and exorcized.
On university campuses, “victims” are using their status, i.e. their power, to silence the expression of differing views. Dozens of religious groups are losing their university accreditation because they choose leaders based on belief. A Marquette professor was suspended and may have his tenure revoked for criticizing a same sex marriage advocate’s quashing of dissent. An Oxford debate on abortion was shut down because feminists complained that two humans “without uteruses” were discussing it. Besides, they said, hearing opposing views would threaten the “mental safety” of the ladies.
The racism analogy is loose canon – crashing around the deck of America and threatening the mainmast.
Published in Culture
Beautifully stated.
Feeling oneself to be a victim has the allure of an addictive drug and likewise stunts one’s happiness and well being. Also like addictive drugs, and illicit industry has risen to profit from it. There is a chilling level of sheer meanness here.
I think what we are seeing now is a greater threat to the Republic than is Iran.
We are drifting into the tyranny of a vocal minority that wants to rule out not just actions, buts thoughts.
It is very Orwell indeed.
Yup. Anyone with a prayer of calling themselves a “victim” is trying to jump on the civil rights bandwagon and ride the coattails of its authority. Time to say–that was a special case–we have to move on or all freedoms will be meaningless.
Doe we expect anything else from someone Jay clearly holds as his Beatrice?
It is well put. I fear I fear. It often seems all we can do now is pray.
Great post.
I have one disagreement — I think that America’s historical treatment of many American Indians and of some Asian immigrants was sufficiently atrocious as to be analogous to the black experience. I’m thinking of events like the Trail of Tears and the Japanese-American internment.
Our fellow citizens of Asian descent appear to have overcome these injustices. I don’t have any good solution to the many problems faced by the Indians, but I will acknowledge that they have a legitimate historical grievance.
I just came here from the 200+ comment post bashing Fred Cole, and I think Mona has summed it up better than anyone. Everyone wants a pity party – even the American Family Association that wants to put on the raiment of aggrieved victim needing this new law. Those that hold traditional beliefs have been pushed into the same status that used to be occupied by the Amish, at least as regard to civil law, and it appears they will have to learn to live with it. In my humble opinion I don’t think the neuralgia generated by laws like RFRA are worth the effort that conservatives are putting into them. Maybe we are right on the narrow principle, but the side effects are more deleterious than any remedy received.
Religious groups need to put aside their theological differences and band together to fight for religious freedom. Just as with the Founding Fathers, if we don’t hang together we will surely hang separately.
So if the toddler throws an embarrassing enough fit he gets the candy?
Rob Long explains my views better than I could in the comments thread of his podcast – I recommend everyone interested in this issue go read it.
Hmmmm, not so sure. A headscarf is one thing, but what about a burka? I think there is something distinctly un-Western about having women cover their heads or their entire faces. What if a religion called for full nudity? Where should the line be drawn?
That’s why we have to be especially careful on the right about playing the victim with regards to things like the liberal media. It’s true, they are biased against conservatives and we are victims of their mis-characterizations – but we must not allow ourselves to play the part of the victim.
Government enforcement of non-discrimination, in law and in private interactions, is necessarily in tension with liberty. The first Civil Rights Act of 1875, the first time the public accommodation doctrine was attempted, was found unconstitutional within decade of its passage. Enforcement of non-discrimination law is in fact always a restriction on liberty that are themselves protected under natural law and our constitutions.
Our country made a choice at some point to tackle historical racism by forcing compliance in a manner that limited liberty. And we did so when there was a general consensus that non-discrimination and liberty were in tension, and so we needed to balance them. Strict scrutiny, which is the legal test codified by RFRA, is an attempt at that balance that was shared by most parts of the culture…until now.
The reason we all feel uncomfortable is because the culture has changed and we recognize that the left and a good part of the middle no longer considers the balance important. They hold non-discrimination as the first principle in American life. I find myself talking to people I have known my whole life and they are completely unconcerned with the liberty side of the equation. Indeed, they cannot come up with any situation where individual action that could be deemed discriminatory should be permitted.
You tie that with the ability to magnify any slight, real or imagined, through the internet and new media against this new hierarchy and you see that the fundamentalists – those who do not respect or even believe in that balance – will eventually force compliance.
I struggle with this. Non-discrimination laws are important. But the culture has changed so much that its crystal clear to me that non-discrimination compliance will eventually eliminate liberty, by both the law and the mob. I am not sure there is a way to avoid it anymore.
Actually, a loose cannon was a bigger threat to the men on board and to a hatchway, though which it could plunge, deck over deck, until it pierced the hull of the ship to sink her.
But I do love the analogy.
I agree with a lot of this but not the first sentence. Secularism has been undermining religious freedom for a long time. Buckley and Neuhaus and people in that vein were writing about this decades ago. We’re just watching a more advanced state of the decay.
The crux of the matter, however, might not be whether a thing is or is not Western.
The First Amendment implies a rational view of religion. How that draws lines, settles what is legal & what illegal, cannot be said in advance, because prudential judgments are involved. But the important part is the assumption that religious freedom is not incompatible with lawful, free gov’t as set up by the Constitution. Public nudity, however, is legally banned on the understanding that human beings should have some shame, if not any dignity–there’s probably something religious in that very law…
As to the rational view of religion, consider that no one thinks that the ritual burning of the living wife on the pyre of the dead husband might be protected by any part of the Constitution…
Yeah, & it is not an accident or somehow the result of willful activists. It is necessity that drives the process. Up until the complete removal of the various inequalities between human beings installed or maintained by Christians, this process will go on–& then again, completion of the process would leave Americans with a bland materialism for a faith, something in which anyone could believe without feeling bad about himself. It would not do, perhaps, to remove all grounds for contempt, grounds for admiration might have to go as well…
No, Mona. Conservatives would side with the business owner’s right to hire and/or fire anyone he pleased for any reason. You’re moving toward the dark side.
Mona, your analysis is excellent, so far as it goes. But I think the problem is even bigger than what you describe. Yes, the left sees the whole world in terms of victims and oppressors. And that feeds their belief that anyone who disagrees with them is not just mistaken, but evil. And this supports their belief that all such disagreement must be silenced, vilified, and destroyed. It is all spelled out, right there, in the writings of Saul Alinsky. The prototype was Stalin – building a worker’s paradise by ruthlessly stamping out any vestige of dissent.
But this extends to everything the left does. It is not limited to oppressed groups. There has been much ado around here lately about the vilification of those who oppose SSM. That is a subject for concern, but I am even more concerned about the use of similar tactics to undermine science. As Pat Sajak pointed out on the last flagship podcast, any scientist who dares to question the supposed “consensus” on global warming will be subjected to a campaign of hate designed to end his or her career. This is horrifying. For the left to attack beliefs that differ from their own is bad enough. Awful, in fact. But when the left launches campaigns designed to terrify people into silence about science – about objective, verifiable facts – then the last line of defense is under siege.
You have raised an interesting point. Americans of Chinese, Japanese and Indian (from India) ethnicity have not been granted victim status and seem to have prospered, unlike the groups who have been granted it. This in spite of being robbed by affirmative action.
Someone must’ve already said this, so here I go. Only individuals have rights. And, the crime of discrimination cannot be committed by anyone other than the government, because only the government pretends to impartiality. By contrast, a private business is free to lose business by turning business away, but it wrongs no one but itself. That goes for race, too: the employer who fails to hire or promote minorities is stupid and the market will punish him. The government, however, represents everyone, and so must not elevate the good of one citizen above another.
So, it’s bootless to debate which interest group should enjoy the same government backing as persons of color. No one should. Should gays be allowed to marry? Of course. It’s none of my business. Should a bakery have the right not to cater? Of course, why even ask? Should idiots be allowed to libel a pizza parlor? Yes. Can they keep me out of there? No.
There is a kind of Jainism in India that calls for full nudity of the men at all times.
Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker agrees with you.