Fruits Of “Anti-Discrimination” Law

     Have a gander at this:

     The Virginia attorney general’s office has ruled that the Loudoun County school system committed illegal racial discrimination by admitting fairly few black and Hispanic students to its selective schools, the Academies of Loudoun. For reasons that have nothing to do with racism, the Academies of Loudoun are much more heavily Asian than the Loudoun County Public Schools as a whole, and have fewer blacks, Hispanics, and whites than the Loudoun school district as a whole. The finding of “discrimination” against LCPS is wrong because it is based on a concept of discrimination that likely does not apply to school systems and was based on an apples-to-oranges comparison.

     The finding of discrimination doesn’t claim that individual black and Hispanic students were treated differently in admissions than white or Asian students, or that the admissions process was motivated by racism. Rather, it claims that the school district unintentionally “discriminated” by using racially “neutral,” colorblind selection processes that admitted disproportionately fewer blacks and Hispanics than their share of the school district’s overall population.

     Did Virginia’s Attorney-general give:

• Any consideration to what races and ethnicities applied for admission?
• Any consideration to applicants’ previous performance in school?
• Any consideration to their standardized test scores, if any?

     Of course not. There’s a social obligation to admit dunces, troublemakers, and cut-ups even to the most selective and academically demanding schools, if that’s what it will take to achieve “racial and ethnic balance.” Indeed, if enough such don’t apply, the Academies must go out and find them – offer them scholarships!

     Clearly, the mission of an explicitly educational institution is no longer education. That has been abolished by political decree.

     Truly, words fail me. Every day that passes, I’m gladder to be called a racist.

Yet Another First World Problem

     “So you want your wife back? Well, guess what! People in Hell want ice water. Not everybody gets everything they want.” – “Kenny London,” played by Mike Pniewski in The Case For Christ

     How long has it been since that great social philosopher Mick Jagger told us that you can’t always get what you want -- ? It should be tattooed on everyone’s eyelids by now – the inside surfaces of their eyelids. But people persist in thinking – and claiming – that what they want, regardless of its nature, is theirs by right.

     Here’s a discourse on a case thereof. The core of the matter is that some persons who have elected to present as the gender opposite to their genetic sex are unhappy about their mating possibilities:

     [B]ecause leftist theorists have split biological sex and gender, there’s this idea in transgender ideology that homosexuality should mean “attracted to people of your own gender.” To them, gender means the sex a person wants to imitate, rather than that person’s immutable biological reality. While biological sex-attracted homosexual men would be attracted to other men, the new idea is that they should be attracted also to trans women, who supposedly have the gender male, but the sex female.

     It’s hard to imagine that the LGBT movement should adopt a position wherein it is acceptable to judge others on account of their sexual preferences. In this case, homosexual men are being shamed for their sexual preference, because they are told that their preferences are not inclusive, and that this lack of inclusivity represents a bias, a prejudice, that needs to be overcome.

     My word. If an individual’s desire can be promoted to a right, such that the denial of that desire by others amounts to an abridgement of his rights, then where the hell are my vast fortune, my private island, and my staff of hundreds of gorgeous, endlessly accommodating attendants? Haven’t I suffered in abject deprivation long enough?

     Screeching that others are somehow wrong or flawed because they won’t accede to your desires is a sign of megalomania. It’s not something for others to take seriously...except perhaps to cross the street and pull their hoodies over their heads should they see you coming.

---

     When it comes to the sexual preferences of the transgendered, there’s a huge irony available: There’s a market for their services, in which high rollers pay a high premium for access to them. I mentioned this in the afterword to Experiences:

     You see, there’s an international market in sex with transwomen: specifically, those who have a refined feminine appearance but have retained their male parts. There are even sex tours—chartered airliners, hotel accommodations, tour guides, the whole nine yards—centered on that market. It’s most visible in Thailand but is also active, albeit more quietly, throughout the Western Pacific. The purchasers of such sexual services pay exceedingly high prices for them.

     I researched that marketplace for the several futanari stories and novels. I’m a rather straitlaced type, so at first it baffled me. But I eventually realized the truth of something an old friend once said to me: Prefix any word whatsoever to the word sex, put the combination in quotes, and Google-search for it. You’ll get tens of thousands of hits regardless of the word you’ve chosen.

     So the anguish of the sexually unsatisfied transgenders described in the Federalist article can be assuaged – possibly even at a profit, though that’s not guaranteed.

---

     Yes, this is definitely a “First World” problem. Only we of the First World have leaned over backwards to appease our petulant minorities. Other lands have less patience for such things. It’s a good lesson in what appeasing the demands of others will get you: more (and more radical) demands.

     Really, we ought to have learned that long ago. It seems that some lessons are more difficult to digest than others.

     My Futanari tales are in part an exploration of the problems the transgendered, a subject another writer steered me toward with a “writers’ challenge.” As I don’t do anything in a straightforward fashion, I took a veering approach to the subject: i.e., by starting out with an exploration of the lives of women – two X chromosomes in every cell – who by a freak of genetics have male genitals: the “futanari.” The troubles transwomen experience because of their choice to transition are amplified for the futanari, who have no choice in the matter. In the course of writing the series, it occurred to me that the entirety of the foofaurauw surrounding transgenderism and the transgendered could be quelled by insisting on a simple truth:

No matter who you are,
What you are,
Or how you present yourself to others,
Nobody owes you anything.

     Basic Americanism, in other words. You’re genetically male but want to present as a woman? Or genetically female but prefer to present as a man? If you have the resources to indulge the inclination, go for it – but don’t demand that others who find your presentation unconvincing bend to your whims. You certainly can’t insist that others of different tastes must find you attractive.

     Unfortunately, Basic Americanism has been on the skids ever since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This is just one of the consequences. But the subject is large. It doesn’t deserve to be tossed off casually at the end of an essay. Anyway, I have a novel to get back to.

Ugly Mascots

     This past Sunday, the city of Toronto experienced a mass shooting. From the reports, the shooter fired a handgun into a number of restaurants and cafes in a spree that lasted for several minutes. He killed two people, one of them a ten year old girl, and injured at least thirteen others. His rampage ended when he was killed by Toronto police.

     Toronto Mayor John Tory immediately announced that the shooter’s motive was “unknown.”

     On Monday the shooter’s identity was released to the press: Faisal Hussain, a 29 year old Muslim. His family was quoted as saying he suffered “severe mental health challenges:”

     Our son had severe mental health challenges, struggling with psychosis and depression his entire life. The interventions of professionals were unsuccessful. Medications and therapy were unable to treat him. While we did our best to seek help for him throughout his life of struggle and pain, we could never imagine that this would be his devastating and destructive end.

     I have not yet learned what sort of mosque Faisal Hussain attended, or what literature has been found in his room, or what sort of statements he’d recently made to other Muslims. But I have my suspicions. And I do know this: Canadian law makes it a felony for someone diagnosed as mentally ill to acquire or possess a gun. So what was its provenance? And the extra, fully loaded clips for that gun, and the rounds in them: where did he get those?

     The silence is deafening.

---

     Traditionally, a mascot was an animal whose adoption was supposed to confer good luck upon its adopters. However, that’s not the function of a political mascot. That sort is intended to display the adopter’s “good intentions.” The Left has made mascots out of the most repulsive groups in our country:

• Muslims
• Criminals
• Psychotics
• Drag queens
• The “homeless”
• Disease carriers
• Militant feminists
• Violent street gangs

     Moreover, it’s probed ever deeper into realms of repulsion and savagery. Most recently, its balloon has floated toward the embrace of pedophiles. Perhaps the Left is consumed by an overpowering need to emphasize its unequaled “tolerance.”

     Or could it be that the prime qualification to become a mascot-group of the Left is a hatred of Western civilization and its norms? That would be consistent with its vilification and steadily intensifying assaults on we in the Right, whose mission is to conserve those norms.

     The evidence points toward one firm conclusion: Ugliness, dysfunction, depravity, and danger are no bar to winning the Left’s affection. They might even help.

---

     In his landmark work The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell declaims as follows:

     The ideals of “a government of laws and not of men” and “equal protection of the law” are at the heart of American constitutional law and the democratic process. Yet, increasingly government has come to be seen as a way of benefitting particular groups adopted as mascots, often without much regard for what that does to other groups or to the integrity of the system as a whole. Groups disliked, distrusted, or feared by the general public are particularly eligible to symbolize the superior wisdom and virtue of the anointed.

     He cites a truly horrifying case later on:

     A classic case of the rights of particular mascot groups overriding the rights of others are cases involving people with contagious diseases, including fatal contagious diseases. The landmark Supreme Court case in this area involved an elementary school teacher with active tuberculosis, who was fired because of fears that she might infect the children she taught. The teacher sued, charging discrimination against the handicapped, in violation of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
     A majority of the Supreme Court ruled that it was indeed discrimination because tuberculosis could be considered a handicap.

     Here is the majority opinion in the case, written by left-liberal Associate Justice William Brennan:

     We do not agree with petitioners that, in defining a handicapped individual under Section 504, the contagious effects of a disease can be meaningfully distinguished from the disease’s physical effects on a claimant in a case such as this. Arline’s contagiousness and her physical impairment each resulted from the same underlying condition, tuberculosis. It would be unfair to allow an employer to seize upon the distinction between the effects of a disease on others and the effects of a disease on a patient and use that distinction to justify discriminatory treatment....
     Allowing discrimination based on the contagious effects of a physical impairment would be inconsistent with the basic purpose of Section 504, which is to ensure that handicapped individuals are not denied jobs or other benefits because of the prejudiced attitudes or the ignorance of others.

     What does this sort of “reasoning” say about the rights of children, their parents, and their associates to avoid infection by a deadly disease? What does it say about the reach of “anti-discrimination” law? What does it say about the cavalier attitude toward the rights and well-being of others the Left displays by its choice of mascot groups?

     Never mind all that, the Left’s luminaries would say; it’s the principle that counts! Discrimination is evil! Thou shalt not discriminate! All the best people say so. But then, the “best people” tend to live in gated communities guarded by men with guns...guns they don’t want the rest of us to have.

---

     If normal people animated by normal convictions and healthful preferences are against it, the Left is for it. If often seems that no other consideration matters. The key shibboleths are “discrimination” and “oppression.” Moreover, the Left will champion it with “pride” parades and other sorts of spectacle. The accumulated evidence is unambiguous.

     In light of the Left’s demonstrated intolerance toward conservative, libertarian, and patriotic sentiments, its repeated proclamations of an obligation to “tolerate” all manner of disruption, destruction, and disease ring tinnily in the ear. The accelerating recognition of this contradiction is powering a wave of disaffiliation from the Left and the Democrat Party, best expressed in the burgeoning “#WalkAway” movement the Left has been at such pains to dismiss.

     At the base it’s fairly simple: you cannot repeatedly violate the rights or sensibilities of others in the name of a non-principle such as “non-discrimination” or “oppression” without reaping the consequences. Clinging to the belief that it’s possible has already cost the Left electorally. I predict that it will do them even further damage in 2018. Should present trends in their leadership continue, that will only fuel their efforts to find other forces and villains on which to blame their setbacks.

Quickies: So You Don’t Think It’s A Pogrom Against Christians?

     Well, you could be right, Gentle Reader. To my old eyes, it looks like a pogrom against freedom itself.

     The Masterpiece Cakeshop decision has the whole homosexual “community” up in arms about homosexuals’ “rights” — specifically, their right to impose themselves on people who want nothing to do with them. The decision and its inadequacies to one side, the case pulls into focus the utter lunacy of any sort of “assertive right:” i.e., a right to impose oneself on others without their consent.

     This is what you get from “nondiscrimination” laws. This is what you get when an assertive group with an agenda that requires the destruction of some other group gets such a law at its disposal. And please, keep any BS about “civil rights” behind your teeth. If there’s a “civil right” to compel another person to work for you at a task of your choosing, what does that do to the Thirteenth Amendment?

     No doubt a lot of the folks decrying the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision are totally against conscription. So what’s the difference?

     Paula Bolyard has some other news and thoughts. Please read it all – it’s staggeringly important – but for those whose eyes glaze over before the climax, I’ll excerpt it here:

     Eventually, probably sooner rather than later, Christians (and Jews and everyone else who holds to the biblical view of sexuality and marriage) will be asked to cheer for the cultural revolution—with gusto. And for many, their enthusiasm (or lack of it) will determine whether they'll be able to keep their job. How will you choose? Will you obey God rather than men? If you choose to be obedient to God, there will be a price to pay for your faithfulness. This is nothing new for Christians, of course. We're called to take up our cross and follow Jesus, no matter the cost. Joshua's charge [to] the Israelites should be a sobering reminder to people of faith:

     Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:14-15)

     Choose today which side you're on in the cultural revolution.

     Choose and act on your choice before it’s taken from you. Only a mobilized, energized mass of millions of Americans can halt this obscenity in its tracks – and by “obscenity” I don’t mean homosexuality itself. Another person’s sexual behavior is a personal election in which no Christian should presume to meddle. But neither should anyone be compelled by law to labor at another person’s behest, regardless of the specifics of the case.

Boiling Point Approaching

     Mine, at least:

     Churches in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts have grave concerns about a new anti-discrimination law that could force congregations to accommodate the transgender community – under the threat of fines and jail time.

     The law, which goes into effect in October, does not specifically mention churches or other houses of worship. However, the attorney general, along with the government commission assigned to enforce the law, have a different point of view.

     Attorney General Maura Healey wrote that places of public accommodation include: “auditoriums, convention centers, lecture halls, houses of worship, and other places of public gathering.”

     Note that the ruling class of Massachusetts has arrogated the privilege of defining a house of worship as a “public accommodation” – something never before claimed by the enforcers of any anti-discrimination statute. And it appears they’re serious about it:

     “Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public,” the document states. “All persons, regardless of gender identity, shall have the right to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation.”

     What pastor, regardless of denomination, would say that any of the services held at his church are “not open to the general public?”

     “The law bootstraps the idea of gender identity onto existing Civil Rights laws,” [Massachusetts Family Institute] president Andrew Beckwith tells me. “Even having a sign in your church that says “This Bathroom is for Biological Women Only” could subject the pastor of the church to up to 30 days in jail.”

     Beckwith said under the law, the sign would be treated the same as if it had said, “Whites Only.”

     He said the MFI reached out to the attorney general’s office for clarification on the law and they were instructed to “get an attorney.”

     The threat is real. Ignore the unctuous reassurances such as this one:

     I reached out to the Mass. Commission Against Discrimination and they told me Commissioner Sunila Thomas George said there’s really no need for alarm.

     “By and large, places of worship are not held to the Massachusetts Anti-Discrimination statutes that deal with places of public accommodation,” she said. “We are not by any means saying that the anti-discrimination laws absolutely apply to them.”

     Don’t walk away reassured just yet:

     “There are circumstances where places of worship hold activities at their facilities or in their buildings that are purely secular events,” she said.

     Among the activities that the state considers secular are soup kitchens, day care, housing, and polling places.

     “In those circumstances, places of worship could be seen as open to the public,” Ms. George told me. “The operative word is ‘could.’”

     Let’s imagine that the enforcers of this “anti-discrimination” law are currently all – 100% – devout Catholics who'd never dream of imposing the demands of this statute on a Christian church. Who is willing to bet the well-being of his parish that they’ll always be exactly that?

     Just one more illustration of what we’ve allowed to be done to us in the name of anti-discrimination.

A Third And Final Grump For Today

     ...I hope so, anyway: 'Religious freedom' is just a code word for intolerance, says U.S. Civil Rights chairman:

     [U.S. Commission on Civil Rights] Chairman Martin Castro's remarks were included in a report released Thursday titled: "Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties." A link to the actual report on the USCCR's website is currently broken....

     "The phrases 'religious liberty' and 'religious freedom' will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance," Castro, a Democrat appointed by President Obama, said.

     He added: "Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over other religions, or a veto power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others."

     Really? So the Founding Fathers intended that there should be laws that privilege the demands of some over the religious convictions of others? How...interesting.

     Anyone even vaguely familiar with the Constitution and the thinking of those who designed it will be aware that the Founding Fathers intended that there should be very little law indeed: the bare minimum required to protect individuals’ rights to their lives, liberty, and property. The Bill of Rights, particularly the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, should make that clear, the contrary representations of the Left notwithstanding. Never in a million years would they have agreed to laws against “discrimination,” one of the Left’s all-time great shibboleths. They would see immediately that such a law tramples on freedom of every sort, especially freedom of religion and freedom of association. They would have sternly catechized whoever might dare to suggest it.

     I’ve written on this subject in the past. I’m sure I’ll need to address it in the future. But that a federal bureaucrat – a man not even elected to his position! – should baldly claim that the very first of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights is nullified by his notions about “discrimination” requires the most severe imaginable response. Perhaps we can send out a blast email accusing him of having blasphemed against the Prophet Muhammad. That would certainly interest the three million or so Muslims in America, don’t you think?

     Barack Hussein Obama appointed this...person. Perhaps that’s just one more entry on Obama’s long list of offenses against the American people, but to me it’s a particularly heinous one, especially in light of the demands that Catholic parishes perform same-sex weddings and Catholic doctors perform abortions.

     Yet people plaintively ask what could account for the reasons for the rise of the Alt-Right. For my part, I want to know where Americans’ spine has gone. Even a hundred years ago, this sort of obscenity would have us massing around both the White House and Capitol Hill with torches and pitchforks. But back then, we had a grasp of freedom as encompassing more than just “voting for a change of masters.” That appears to be missing from our time.

A Standard Of Non-Standards

     The non-standard – a completely subjective, define-it-as-we-go rationale for punishing members of some disfavored groups – is being institutionalized:

     Oregon State University is developing an online course centered on “social justice” that new students will soon be required to take....

     Oregon State’s course, as proposed, would consist of five online modules that include a primer on “social justice efforts in Oregon and at OSU,” instruction on how campus diversity advocates define “an inclusive and equitable university community,” details on how students can “incorporate the pursuit of social justice within their university experiences,” and information on how to “explore opportunities for engagement in ongoing social justice learning.”

     Oregon State is no stranger to social justice training. Last year, the public university spent $11,500 on three racially segregated social justice retreats for students that examined topics such as white privilege, racism and oppression, according to financial records obtained by The College Fix through a public records act request.

     Today, a decent American who hears the term social justice should immediately go for his guns. The contrapositive notion of discrimination, which is deliberately kept nebulous and accuser-defined, has become the principal stick with which the Left seeks to beat us into submission. Moreover, there’s no forgiving the “social justice warriors” for this outrageous abuse of justice, for they know exactly what they do:

     As for OSU’s new online course, the modules will remain under development through the fall, an effort led by a committee of students and faculty who have worked throughout the spring and summer to gather feedback on content from campus community members to finalize the finished product, according to Angela Batista, Oregon State University’s interim Chief Diversity Officer, in an email to The College Fix.

     Asked to expand on the “expectations for an inclusive and equitable university community,” Batista said the committee is still finalizing these guidelines, but that in general, “we feel that every student has a role to play in creating and sustaining an equitable and inclusive university community – one that is defined by shared respect for diverse backgrounds, perspectives, ideas and the ways that individuals live.”

     Asked how Oregon State defines social justice, Batista said that is also a work in progress.

     I’ve said this before: To define is to limit. A defined offense is one that’s been specified adequately that anyone of adult mental capacity can know whether he’s violated it or is on the verge of doing so. An offense whose occurrences exist solely in the opinions of others is undefined; one cannot know when one is in violation, and so one can be indicted and tried for it to one’s complete surprise.

     But wait; there’s more! OSU isn’t interested in educating its incoming students about “social justice;” it seeks to train them, the way one might train a puppy. It wants them to react with unthinking horror and opposition whenever one of their masters points and says “Bad!” This, of course, is a vital necessity for the enforcement of a non-standard: the cannon fodder must not think or reflect; it must charge whenever the vanguard commands it. To achieve this end, the Left seeks to suppress any critical examination of the core concepts under discussion. Therefore, it cannot allow discussion in the Socratic pattern; it must instill reflexes that the reason cannot countervail. Robby Soave at Reason thrusts for the heart:

     A student has no method of dissenting during an online training session on the necessity of complying with the university's diversity dictates. Indeed, students might reasonably fear that agreeing with the ideology of the trainers is a precondition of coming to campus.

     Students are no longer merely required to grapple with leftist ideas in the classroom—they increasingly must live, sweat, and breathe "oppression studies." It is no wonder that so many of them have developed a healthy disrespect for the principles of the First Amendment. They are being trained—not taught, but trained—to think everything that offends them is a bias incident.

     Touché! But even this, as piercing as it is, is incomplete.

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     I’ve written several essays on the importance of discrimination as a legal right and social corrective. Here’s what I consider the key element of my position:

     There is only one countermeasure to the Left’s steady elimination of every right except the rights to sodomy and abortion. It’s a costly one, one that most persons – even most persons reading this screed – will recoil from, on the grounds of self-preservation.

     We must rehabilitate and reinvigorate discrimination.

     To discriminate is to apply a standard and make a consequent choice. It’s to say “That isn’t acceptable,” and to act on one’s verdict. It’s the ultimate expression of individuality, for no one can set your standards for you but you.

     It’s vital that men of good will recognize the magnitude of the threat. If discrimination is assumed to be inherently wrong, then individuality has been criminalized. For individuality consists of nothing more than the possession of individual capacities, tastes, and standards. A society in which discrimination is forbidden, whether by law (as in the case of the odious Civil Rights Acts that effectively abolish private property in industry and commerce) or by social pressure (as the Left seeks to do whenever it accuses someone of “racism,” “sexism,” “lookism,” “ableism,” “homophobia,” “Islamophobia,” or any of its other shibboleths) is a completely collectivized society in which the “law” is whatever suits those at the levers of power.

     Men of good will determined to remain at all free must not kowtow to such dictates any longer. That’s why I so frequently say, plainly and openly, to the snarling minions of the Left:

• I am a racist.
• I am a sexist.
• I am a lookist.
• I am an ableist.
• I am a homophobe.
• I am an Islamophobe.

     I’ll own all of that cheerfully.
     Try finding someone I’ve actually harmed.
     Come back when you’ve got something new.

Quickies: An Unusual Connectedness Problem

     I’ve often used the phrase connectedness problem to describe a situation where two instances of pernicious government activity reinforce one another’s rationales. Both should end, yet their backers, many of whom can understand how one generates the “need” – i.e., the rationale – for the other, will nevertheless defend both. The irony is that the usual defense is that “we can’t end X as long as Y continues.”

     Just today, courtesy of Ace of Spades, I’ve been considering a new application for the phrase:

     By the way, if you're under the impression there's some hope for this in the Libertarian Party, well, I wouldn't count on it:

     The moderator, John Stossel, then asked whether Jews should have to bake a Nazi wedding cake and Johnson replied, “That’s my contention, yes.” He then went on to cite the silliest slippery slope argument I have ever heard—and I’ve heard some silly ones. He actually said that a private utility company might decide to shut off someone’s electricity for religious reasons.

     Is this really a problem? No really; has this ever happened in the history of the universe? Where do they get these ridiculous scenarios?

     Stossel waved this off with a generic "you know, libertarians disagree on stuff" observation, and studiously ignored the obvious: that Johnson's stated policy preference was not merely some minor difference in libertarian philosophy, but rather a wholesale abandonment of pretty much everything libertarians claim to stand for.

     Fortunately, there were other libertarians in the debate who aren't raging statists on this issue like Johnson. But even so, you'd think the Libertarian Party would be up front and center, loudly and insistently defending Christian florists and bakers against the most blatant violations of the 13th Amendment in recent history. But they've collectively been AWOL since the beginning. It's no wonder we're losing so badly on this issue: all we have are lukewarm supporters and uncertain trumpets. And "libertarians" like Gary Johnson who have, in effect, sided with the enemy.

     The connection here is between an unwarranted exertion of State power and a prevalent attitude among self-nominated libertarians. The exertion of State power is the imposition of the “public accommodation” conception on privately owned businesses. The attitude – and this is not unanimous, though it does seem to be the majority view – is that religious belief is a source of division and prejudice that must be fought.

     A significant number of libertarians are uneasy about the right to discriminate. A larger number are overtly hostile to religious belief. The combination renders them ready to endorse antidiscrimination laws that make a mockery of the notion of private property. Yet they’d rather defend those laws than say a good word about faith, absolute freedom of association in all spheres, or both.

     The damnedest things can stop people’s minds cold. I’m no paragon of crystal-perfect logical consistency; there’s probably something that stops mine. I wonder what it is.

Quickies: The Dark Side Of “Tolerance”

     I found this at Virtual Mirage:

     The Japanese have their problems – most prominent among them, a lack of interest in producing more Japanese – but they appear to have solved one of the problems that bedevils the United States. Note in this connection that the Japanese don’t consider discrimination a dirty word. In that regard, they’ve done right by themselves while we pursue a course toward national suicide.

White Rights

     These days you can visit a considerable number of places on the Web to hear racial rants, taunting, denunciations, and calls for this or that sort of “action.” The “Black Lives Matter” whores are only the currently most visible examples. Nearly all such sites are contemptible. But not all: some are worse. Clearly, this is an imbalance that demands to be redressed.

     Our esteemed Colonel Bunny has posted a statistics-laden piece that utterly refutes one of the most important lies currently bedeviling American society: the canard that American Caucasians of European descent, who will henceforth be referred to as whites, despise and are attempting to destroy the members of other races and ethnicities. The truly stunning thing about this deceit is that not only is it untrue, it’s the exact reverse of the truth:

• Crimes against whites by others utterly overwhelm crimes by whites against others.
• Whites have extended a hand of friendship and assistance to others, and have usually had it spat on, bitten, or swatted aside.
• Peaceful white neighborhoods have ceased to be peaceful when non-whites have moved into them – and not because the whites have tried to drive them out.
• Non-white racial and ethnic groups, though not united on other points, are utterly unanimous on this one: the “white devil” must be dispossessed and destroyed.
• Despite all the above, any hint of protest, much less counter-organization by whites is denounced as illegitimate, inherently racist, and an expression of hatred.

     This isn’t exactly new. More than thirty years ago, a young woman of no small intelligence nor achievement told me that should my neighborhood experience racial admixture of the sort well known to promote disorder and loss of property values, it would be my moral duty to remain here and endure it, because...well, just because. She could not articulate any objective reason; it was entirely a matter of her opinion.

     At one of his recent campaign appearances, Democratic presidential aspirant Martin O’Malley was shouted down for suggesting, in response to the chants of “Black Lives Matter” agitators, that all lives matter. Bernie Sanders has had to cope with something similar. Persons who dare to suggest that contemporary whites have no responsibility for the statistical differences between whites’ aggregate wealth and achievement and the wealth and achievement of other races and ethnicities are routinely branded as racists, haters, and persons who want to bring back slavery.

     This mick-wop honky has had quite enough.

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     We on the Right have often complained that we lack conservative politicians with actual spines. In reflecting on that notion, it struck me that our politicians, while not a perfectly representative sample of our ranks, nevertheless are drawn from it. Thus, an increase in our overall Backbone Quotient – BQ? – would surely elevate that of our elected officials. (At the very least, we should be trying our best to raise the “lower end” of the bell curve.)

     Racial/ethnic matters are a significant venue for such improvements. Today, virtually no one in public office or seek to enter it is willing to say, publicly, any of the following:

• Violent crimes and crimes against property are overwhelmingly committed by non-whites.
• Neighborhoods characterized by disorder, squalor, and violence are almost always non-white.
• The quality of local schools is inversely proportional to their attendance by non-whites.
• Non-white communities routinely shelter the lawbreakers among them against public justice.
• Demands for “free stuff” emanate almost exclusively from non-whites and their mouthpieces.
• Non-whites who point out such facts are demonized: “Oreos,” “Uncle Toms,” “race traitors,” etc.

     Despite all that we have the phenomenon of black racialist groups demanding that a few states be separated off into a new all-black nation...which, however, would be supported by funds from the rest of the country. We have groups such as Aztlan and La Raza demanding open immigration from the south, and that the American Southwest be returned to union with Mexico. Newest on the scene are the exclaves dominated by Middle Eastern Muslim “immigrants” and “refugees” where the writ of law does not run and it is unsafe for whites to tread.

     But don’t you dare to say that white lives matter...that the Knockout Game, a.k.a. “polar bear hunting,” is a real phenomenon...that illegal aliens from south of the border commit huge numbers of violent crimes, whether against one another or against whites...or that the degradation of our public facilities correlates strongly with the invasion of nearby neighborhoods by non-whites.

     It’s been said more times than anyone could count that it’s impossible to address a problem you aren’t willing to name. Someone must name it. It appears that the mantle has descended on me:

     The problem is non-whites.

---

     It’s time for a countermeasure. Indeed, it’s possible that we’re already too late. Nevertheless, I propose a blatant, in-your-face approach that makes plain that American whites will stand for no more:

Restore The Rights Of American Whites!

     Those rights include all the following:

• Freedom of association, including the freedom to discriminate in buying and selling.
• Freedom of enterprise, including the right to hire, fire, promote, and demote upon arbitrary criteria.
• Repeal of all laws that distinguish any racial, ethnic, or religious group from any other, regardless of context.
• The elimination of “stakeholder” laws and judicial presumptions that award privileges to recognized groups.
• The right to form proprietary communities protected by enforceable covenants, including covenants that restrict residency according to race or ethnicity.

     Note that none of the above propositions would create legal privileges that only whites would enjoy. Indeed, the condition of the country at this time is such that only whites are, de facto, denied any of the above rights. Blacks and Hispanics can form race or ethnicity-based groups and associations without fear of legal penalty. Black employers can hire blacks exclusively without worrying about what the EEOC will say, and of course the same is true for Hispanics and Muslims. Though the laws would appear to weigh as heavily on non-whites’ discrimination against whites as the reverse, they’re not enforced when the target would be a non-white business or organization.

     It’s time not merely to halt the locomotive of racial-ethnic degradation, but to reverse it. If non-whites want the fruits of the American blessing that whites experience, let them earn those fruits on the same plane as we did. Those who’d prefer not to make the effort can choose among the other continents of the world...assuming those lands would have them.

From The Biter Bit Files

     Now and then I must confess to Schadenfreude. It’s a nasty failing, but when everything has been politicized, such that there’s no sphere of actual private life to which one can retire and make one’s refuge, seeing those you despise lose a round brings a satisfaction for which there is no metric. I’m fairly certain that many others feel the same way.

     Thus it warmed the cockles of my spiny little heart to read this story:

     Stephanie Burns came up with the idea for Chic CEO, a free online platform for female entrepreneurs, in 2008, when she was getting her MBA. Many of her friends had lost jobs in the recession and were asking her for tips on how to start their own businesses. After hosting about 15 friends at her San Diego home to exchange advice, Burns realized there was a market for offering entrepreneurial guidance to women. A year later, she launched her company.

     Up until 2014, the focus of her work involved providing practical business advice to women in the form of free, easy-to-follow online materials. Every so often, Burns also organized networking events for women at which attendees could sip cocktails and chat about work. It was to one of these gatherings, held at an Italian restaurant last April in downtown San Diego, that two men showed up.

     May we have some suspense music, Maestro?

     Two men named Allan Candelore and Rich Allison, who had each prepaid a $20 registration fee on the Chic CEO website, tried to enter the restaurant. According to a legal complaint that they later filed with National Coalition for Men president Harry Crouch, Burns turned them away at the door, saying the event “was only open to women.” They took a photo, left the premises, then promptly initiated legal action, turning to a 1959 California law originally written to prevent discrimination against minorities and women.

     That law, California’s UNRUH Civil Rights Act, forbids businesses to discriminate on several bases, including sex. Chic CEO was thus legally prohibited from barring male attendance at its event. That’s about as open and shut as any case in civil-rights law ever gets. The consequences:

     It’s not clear how much the out-of-court settlement cost Chic CEO, but it was enough to virtually drive them out of business.

     If you’d like a fresh, steaming-hot sample of feminist outrage at having an anti-discrimination law used to penalize discrimination by women against men, read the above-linked articles. For myself, I expect to enjoy my fit of Schadenfreude all morning.

---

     I’ve written before that discrimination is both right and necessary. Ergo, laws that forbid discrimination are wrong on principle. That having been said, what better way to demonstrate the wrongness of a law than to have it used to penalize a group it was intended to privilege, a group that had assumed victim status and used it to oppress others?

     Now, as it happens – and I mean what I say here in its exact sense – the typical American woman is unable to think. It’s possible that this is an artifice of her educational environment, but whether or not that’s so has no bearing on the consequences of her deficiency. Thus, she’ll celebrate something like the UNRUH Civil Rights Act without reflecting on its symmetry, because it’s “intended” to protect women against discrimination by men. When that symmetry is used against discrimination by women, she’ll whine that “It’s not fair,” never reflecting on the impossibility of making intent a component of law that stands above its text.

     However, whereas the typical American woman is unable to think, far too many American men are disinclined to think – in particular, about the secondary and tertiary consequences of acting on “good intentions.”

---

     Many, many bills have been written, passed by both houses of some legislature, and signed into law by the relevant executive without anyone taking time to reflect on the outer consequences of those bills. For example, for quite a while New York state maintained an “anti-usury” law that capped the interest rate that could be charged on a mortgage or installment loan. Such a law arbitrarily limits the price of loaned money to a certain maximum – and every price cap creates a shortage of the thing thus price-limited. In this case, the shortage was of loans, particularly mortgage loans, to persons with poor credit. In consequence, such persons, a large percentage of whom were young people without a substantial credit history, were shut out of the real estate market.

     Then came the Carter Inflation. The dollar was deteriorating at roughly 13% per year, while the banks were limited to a maximum mortgage interest rate of 10%. Suddenly, it wasn’t just “persons with poor credit” who couldn’t get a mortgage; no one could. The only way to buy a home in New York state was in cash.

     Yes, the “anti-usury” law was repealed. But those against whom the law had discriminated for decades had no recourse. Their injuries were permanent.

     So it is with every law that purports to forbid “discrimination.” Discrimination is often rational and economically necessary. For example, the racial disparity in the sciences is unavoidable, as American Negroes earn doctorates in the sciences at a rate far below that of American Caucasians and Orientals. Thus, a law that requires physics departments to have a “proportional representation” of the three races would close nearly every physics department in America. The same could be said of symphony orchestras, Chinese restaurants, and the National Basketball Association, albeit the “underrepresented” races would differ.

     Freedom of association must apply to business and commerce just as it does to one’s choice of drinking buddies. A group such as Chic CEO should be allowed to stage a women-only event without legal jeopardy. But permission for women to discriminate against men comes at a price the feminist harridans are unwilling to pay: permission for men to discriminate against women. This is a Gordian knot sheathed in tungsten carbide; “good intentions” cannot slice through it.

---

     I’ve written in the past about female idiocy, and I stand by the convictions I’ve espoused. That doesn’t mean I’m happy about these consequences:

     Which is why American men who still possess a shred of masculine self-regard won't marry you or procreate with you, treat you with suspicion at all times, speak derisively of your oh-so-vaunted "accomplishments" and the viragoes who trumpet them, and are generally disdainful of your entire sex.

     Think about that when you next hear a "joke" about kicking one of us in the nuts.

     Before we lost our grip on the manly virtues, when “Men treated women with courtesy, respect, and a certain protective affection,” women were statistically safer, less prone to injury, and far less likely to degrade themselves with heedless promiscuity and its frequent consequence, unwed motherhood. They also had more de facto latitude of action. The rise of gender-war feminism, about the consequences of which Robert Stacy McCain has written many thousands of words, is responsible for the deterioration in the aggregate condition of American womanhood.

     And so I say unto you, Gentle Reader:

     If you’re an American woman...
     If you consider yourself a decent, “fair” person...
     And if you sincerely want to see the condition of women improve...

Oppose The Feminist Harridans.
Stand For Freedom Of Association.

     The feminists are not your friends. Celebrate with me the ever more frequent demonstrations of how their legal “triumphs” have caused them weeping and gnashing of teeth. And reflect on what Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his magnificent essay “Compensation:”

     You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong....

     All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbour feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me....

     Justice is not postponed....Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty.

     And thus shall it ever be.

Preferred And Dispreferred Discriminations

     Via InstaPundit, we have this fascinating article:

     In 2002, University of Illinois-Chicago history professor Richard J. Jensen printed “No Irish Need Apply: A Myth of Victimization.” His abstract begins:

     “Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming ‘Help Wanted—No Irish Need Apply!’ No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent.”

     In short, those famous “No Irish Need Apply” signs—ones that proved Irish Americans faced explicit job discrimination in the 19th and 20th centuries? Professor Jensen came to the blockbuster conclusion that they never existed.

     The theory picked up traction over the last decade, but seemed to reach an unexpected fever pitch in the last few months. Explainer websites this year used it to highlight popular myths of persecution complexes that are, as Vox put it, “stand-ins for an entire narrative about how immigrants are treated in America.” That’s from the lede of an article printed in March called “‘No Irish Need Apply’: the fake sign at the heart of a real movement.”

     Here, of course, is the problem: After only couple of hours Googling it, Rebecca [Fried], a 14-year-old, had found out these signs had, in fact, existed all along. Not only in newspaper listings—in which they appeared in droves—but, after further research, in shop windows, too.

     The Irish were persecuted in the American job market—and precisely in the overt, literally written-down way that was always believed.

     All of this would have been written off as a myth if it weren’t for Rebecca Fried, a rising high school freshman—who one of the preeminent scholars on the Irish diaspora in the United States now calls a “hero” and “quite extraordinary”—and who simply couldn’t believe it, either.

     Please read it all before continuing on here.

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     The history of anti-Irish sentiment in the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries has been well documented:

     Ralph Waldo Emerson put it rather inelegantly: the Irish were “deteriorated in size and shape, the nose sunk, the gum exposed...[they clearly] operated with diminished brain” (Knobel 1986, 120).They were “black vomit,” useful as “industrial guano” but nothing else (quoted by Smith 1899, 72). E. E. Hale was more analytical but no kinder: “Their inferiority as a race compels them to go to the bottom; and the consequence is that we are, all of us, the higher lifted because they are here.” (Hale 1852, 52-53) In 1848, the exquisitely patrician George Templeton Strong noted in his diary that the Irish had “prehensile paws supplied them by nature,” which made “the handling of the spade and the wielding of the pickaxe easy and natural. They had congenital hollows on the shoulder wonderfully adapted to make the carrying of the hod a luxury.” (Nevins 1953, voi.1, 318) Strong may have been half kidding, but Thomas Carlyle, whose social acuity Strong much admired, was not kidding at all when he wrote that the Irishman, in “his rags and laughing savagery...is there to undertake all the work that can be done by mere strength of hand and back.” It was a willingness to work—and nothing else—that commended the Irish.

     The above is just one of many citations I could provide. But along comes Professor Richard J. Jensen, he writes an article claiming the opposite, and voila! “The theory picked up traction over the last decade, but seemed to reach an unexpected fever pitch in the last few months.” Yet a high school freshman with not credentials was able to amass a great deal of contrary evidence, using only Google – a feat that appears to have incited the professor to a fit of rage.

     I have no idea how Professor Jensen was originally drawn to speculating that anti-Irish sentiment and the attendant occupational discrimination against them was historically less than so many other scholars had believed. Nevertheless, he advanced that thesis rather aggressively and got a lot of concurrence from other academics. Were those other academics also historians with an interest in the subject? Unclear. What is clear is that this particular instance of ethnic discrimination was being denied by a swelling number of voices.

     Why? Academia being as strongly left-aligned as it has been for some time now, discrimination of any sort would seem to be a subject that would draw professional scholars’ intense interest and enthusiastic investigation. Nor is the historical record at all ambiguous on the subject. Yet they were ready and willing to pooh-pooh this particular instance of discrimination on the representation of a single colleague. It’s worth one’s time to ponder the possible reasons.

---

     Among Leftists, “the narrative” determines all other things, including which facts they’re willing to concede. I’ve ranted about this on several occasions:

• ”The Narrative”
• Narratives
• Narratives Part 2: Distractions
• Narrative Uber Alles!

     If there’s a clash between Leftists’ preferred narrative and the recognition of past discrimination against Irish immigrants, it would be “in character” for a Leftist to maintain that anti-Irish discrimination did not occur, or perhaps has been wildly overblown, a “myth.” My quandary is that no such clash is immediately apparent. Hasn’t the Left been notably pro-immigrant, at least in recent years? What would countervail that preference in this particular case?

     Perhaps the question should be reframed: Does the Left harbor an animus against the Irish, or against Americans of Irish descent, that trumps – for them – the historical facts of this matter?

---

     Ideology can make its holders incoherent. Every ideology, as Clarence Carson has told us, is a partial model of reality. That’s not a slam against ideology as such. All human conceptions are partial things. We’re incapable of producing a conception that models reality completely; it’s too big for us. But when facts arise that test the boundaries of an ideology and demonstrate its limits, the holder must be willing to admit that however strongly he believes in it, it nevertheless has a specific domain of application outside which it’s useless or worse. Not to do so is intellectually dishonest and arrogant.

     Leftist ideology has proved hostile to certain facts. The prevailing tendency among Leftists has been to attempt to ignore those facts – in extreme cases, to shout them down and to conduct campaigns of denunciation and intimidation against those who cite them. The diagnosis could not be simpler.

     My problem lies in finding the aspect of Leftism that makes the recognition of anti-Irish discrimination unpalatable. Is this not just one more example of the xenophobia the Left has criticized? Is this not merely one more expression of our “othering” tendency, our need to see ourselves as somehow superior to others? Where’s the clash – and what makes it so important that whole reams of American history must be effaced?

     Might it be that the Irish and their descendants are predominantly Catholic? Or is it that we’re a wee bit too...white?

     Food for thought.

The Urgent Need To Discriminate

     I’ve written about this before. I meant it then, and I mean it now. In light of some recent developments, it’s acquired overwhelming force.

---

     A couple of weeks ago, Ashe Schow wrote about the current feminist pogrom against college-aged men:

     If a student has been wrongly accused of sexual assault on their college campus, how are they supposed to prove their innocence?...

     After what [Emma] Sulkowicz claimed was a brutal rape in which she was pinned, beaten and choked before being raped, she sent [Paul] Nungesser numerous messages asking to hang out, even telling him she loved him. Nungesser tried to get those messages introduced as evidence during his Columbia University hearing, but was denied. Nungesser, who has since become the victim of a public campaign of defamation by his accuser, was exonerated anyway....

     A similar situation played out at Vassar College when Peter Yu introduced Facebook messages showing his accuser apologizing to him for the evening. She apologized for leading him on and said that she had "a wonderful time" with him. But a year later, when Yu produced these messages for the disciplinary panel, his accuser claimed they "did not correctly reflect her feelings" because she was in a state of "shock and disbelief" about the encounter. The disciplinary committee bought her claim and expelled Yu.

     Clearly, these “disciplinary committees” exercised no discipline over their own procedures. To steal a phrase from Joseph Schumpeter, they had the sentence of death in their pockets, and they were going to pass it regardless of any and all developments. Nor are Nungesser and Yu outliers; when it comes to accusations by women of sexual assaults by men, the trend on university campuses is exactly as they experienced it.

     Meanwhile, universities are experiencing an accelerating imbalance of young women in their enrollees. Marriage-minded young women complain that eligible young men are avoiding them. Employers are finding new and ingenious ways to avoid hiring young women, regardless of their credentials. And Friday nights find quite a lot of young single women sitting at the bar surrounded entirely by...other young single women.

     In other words, young men are learning to discriminate against young women.

---

     Discrimination works when it’s tried. Here’s a case where it badly needs to be tried:

     It just got surreal. George Washington University Law School Professor John Banzhaf filed a human rights complaint to the D.C. Office of Human Rights against Catholic University for hindering Muslim students’ free exercise of their faith due to the “excessive” amount of “Catholic imagery” on the campus. It seems that this man – who teaches at a different school across town – thinks that Catholic University’s adherence to the cultural aspects of Catholicism (we have a lot of artwork, Crucifixes, and statues in every nook and cranny) keeps muslim students from praying the required five times a day.

     Banzhaf, who already has a pending lawsuit against the university over ending its policy of allowing mixed-gender dormitories and has a history of filing civil rights suits on such topics as childhood obesity and smoking, filed the complaint alleging that Muslim students are not given their own prayer rooms.

     He alleges that the university, “does not provide space – as other universities do – for the many daily prayers Muslim students must make, forcing them instead to find temporarily empty classrooms where they are often surrounded by Catholic symbols which are incongruous to their religion,” according to the Tower, Catholic University’s student newspaper.

     Let’s leave aside this idiot Banzhaf’s obvious hatred for Catholic institutions and the Catholic faith. What makes allegations of his sort possible at all? That there are Muslim students at Catholic University! And why, pray tell, is that?

     A number of Catholic institutions have succumbed to the lure of increased revenue by admitting non-Catholic students. Some have even hired non-Catholic faculty and staff. As an example of arrant insanity, this would be hard to top – and given current trends in labor law and nondiscrimination law, it will be very hard to undo. But monetary considerations aside, it will require Catholic University and similar institutions to brace themselves for a necessity that will no doubt pain many: the need to say to a non-Catholic applicant for enrollment or employment that “You don’t qualify.” Upon being asked why, the sole adequate answer will be the one all of America has been inhibited against uttering:

“We discriminate in favor of Catholics.”

     And there must be no exceptions granted.

---

     Riots in Ferguson. Riots in St. Louis. Riots in Baltimore. Massive looting and property destruction. And all the participants, to within the limits of measurement precision, have been black.

     Whites don’t riot. Even the highly disruptive “Occupy” demonstrations were never riots. Whites don’t assault random passers-by on public streets. Neither are whites inclined to rally around a convicted murderer because of his race. (See also this recent case.) In just about every situation where distinctions on the basis of race occur, those distinctions operate in Negroes’ favor and against Caucasians, regardless of any and all other considerations.

     At this point, even the most diehard, race-is-a-social-construct / I-don’t-see-skin-color leftist is aware that concentrations of Negroes are highly dangerous to non-Negroes. When the black population of a district passes a certain level, crime rates rise, conditions for ordinary commerce deteriorate, and white flight begins. As this happens even in left-liberal-dominated coastal cities – indeed, it’s most pronounced in exactly such cities — the claim that it’s only “racist conservatives” doing the flying is ridiculous on its face.

     What are we to make of this? Yes, there’s a strong argument that left-liberal policies give rise to the sort of cultural accretions that correlate with local deterioration...but so does race. Given that the politicians are elected by the local populace, the only credible responses are to disperse the populace or to confine it behind an impassable fence. Both constitute discrimination -- discrimination in defense of life and property. If this is forbidden, our rights to our lives and our property are shams. But then, the very people doing the forbidding are also working to deprive us of the instruments of self-defense, aren’t they?

---

     Discrimination has become a moral, social, and political imperative. Sorting among one’s personal associates isn’t yet illegal, thank God. But most other forms of discrimination are either banned outright or have been made torturously difficult. Indeed, with its “diversity” programs the federal government, which now controls approximately one-third of all spending in the United States, has added financial incentives to the maintenance of a “diverse” work force.

     Yet it must be so. There remain ways to do it. Some of those ways are gaining adherents by the day. And they are finding that their lives, their states of mind, and often their fortunes are being improved thereby.

     Discrimination isn’t bigotry; it’s a response to conditions. And it works.

Concurrence At Last

     Now and then, I find myself hammering a point that other people simply don’t get. The symptoms range from mute incomprehension to outrage (at me). The modal response is somewhere around “What do you mean? That can’t be right.”

     So it’s been with the point I’ve strained to make about the evil of “compelling government interest:”

Probably the most common approach to the teaching of "political science" in our institutions of "higher learning" -- really now, you should know those are sneer quotes without having to ask -- is the authoritarian-allocation model. In this conception, the quest for political power is a contest over who shall be awarded the sovereign's privilege of licensure: the power to say who may do any given thing, who may use any particular resource, and who shall be exempt from all such laws. Underneath this model lies the assumption that there is no higher moral standard that would preclude the sovereign's arbitrary allocation of privileges. In other words, the sovereign is above all conceptions of absolute right and wrong....

Most members of our political class accept the authoritarian-allocation model as fully applicable to the United States. They dismiss Constitutional constraints as "obsolete;" many of them will admit it with the cameras rolling. Neither does the clash with our concept of individuals' rights bother them overmuch; they have a number of dodges with which to evade it, most prominent among them the notion of "compelling government interest." However they rationalize it, they see the proper sphere of government as the licensure of all things: decreeing who may do what, and with whom, and for how much, and under what circumstances, for any and every human activity under the Sun.

     Licensure and “compelling government interest” are interdependent; each requires the other to sustain it. In any analysis of the consequences of accepting those notions as valid, the emphasis should lie upon the government’s privilege of forbidding under threat of punishment. The power to say “you may” arises wholly from the power to say “you may not” – and to enforce the dictate at gunpoint.

     But why no government can validly claim to have “interests,” compelling or otherwise, seems to elude most people. The core of it is that in the American Constitutional system, a government is an agent: a hireling charged with specified responsibilities and allowed to engage in certain delimited activities in discharging them. The relationship is exactly parallel to a homeowner who engages a landscaper to trim his hedge. The job is defined by the homeowner, and the landscaper is to do that and nothing else.

     Imagine that the landscaper sees himself as having “interests” that include turning the homeowner’s hedge into a topiary. Would the homeowner be justified in becoming upset? Would he have a good case for refusing the landscaper his fee for that “service?” If the answers strike you as obvious, ask yourself why claims of “compelling government interests” should be treated any differently.

---

     It was with great joy that I stumbled this very morning upon this essay by Will Grigg:

The nation-wide convulsion of collectivist rage triggered by enactment of the Indiana religious freedom act illustrated that “civil rights,” as currently defined, requires the immediate punishment of any business owner who exercises the right to refrain from commerce. Yes, self-styled proponents of “tolerance” can succumb to the temptations of punitive populism, just like their counterparts on the Right.

     An even more compelling illustration of the totalitarian mindset that typifies what is now called “civil rights” was offered by Idaho’s HB 2, more commonly known as the “Add the Words” bill. If it had been enacted by the state legislature, HB 2 would have added “sexual orientation” of various kinds to the state’s Human Rights Act as a protected category with regard to discrimination in employment and “public accommodations.” It also would have explicitly criminalized – perhaps for the first time anywhere in the Soyuz – the act of reserving one’s right to refuse service.

     Section 67-5909 (5) (b) of the legislation would have made it a “prohibited act” for “a person” to “print, circulate, post, or mail or otherwise cause to be published a statement, advertisement, or sign which indicates that the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages of a place of public accommodation will be refused, withheld from, or denied an individual or that an individual’s patronage of or presence at a place of public accommodation is objectionable, unwelcome, unacceptable, or undesirable.”

     If HB 2 or a future measure employing the same language were to be enacted, a business owner who posted the “right to refuse” sign could not only be sued, but dragged away from his property in handcuffs. A critic of the measure could likewise find himself being prosecuted for publishing a letter to the editor, a Facebook post, or a blog comment urging business owners to exercise the right of refusal.

     Punishing the peaceful expression of such opinions would be justified, according to the civil rights commissariat, because government has a “compelling interest” in preventing discrimination – even at the expense of individual liberty....

As an abstract fiction without body, parts, or passions, the state cannot have a legitimate “interest” in anything. Indulging, for a moment, the contrary view, the state’s interest in self-preservation would always dictate the expansion of power, and the corresponding curtailment of liberty. This shouldn’t be considered surprising once it’s understood that the “compelling state interest” doctrine had its origins in the Supreme Court’s 1944 decision Korematsu v. United States – which upheld the mass internment, in military custody, of Japanese-Americans who had broken no law.     

     Please read it all.

     The “compelling government interest” doctrine, under which any individual right can be abridged, modified, suspended, or simply ignored, can be used to justify any action by government, regardless of its consequences. Who, after all, gets to define such interests? It certainly isn’t you or I.

     The notion is entirely antithetical to constitutionalism, under which a government’s sphere of action is constrained to specified subjects and further limited by individuals’ rights. Had the Founding Fathers foreseen “compelling government interest” being put forward to rationalize the outrages we suffer today, they’d have given up on the whole Constitutional project as being too good for a people who’d kneel before such a lie.

     But we’ve accepted it. And it has swallowed us whole.

---

     I’ve written that the Republic, as defined by our Constitution and the legal tradition we inherited from our English origins, has fallen. If there’s a single, most culpable actor in this tragedy, it would be our judiciary, which invented the “compelling government interest” notion to justify the mass internment of West Coast Japanese-Americans during World War II.

     Will Grigg understands. To have encountered another commentator who grasps this critical point has lifted my spirits. More, he appreciates the infinite scope of that evil doctrine, which is now being used to suppress individual rights in every venue from “anti-terrorism” to “civil rights.” It’s the root of a great many evils. It must be ripped out of our soil for us to have a chance at freedom once again.

     I’ve also written of the right to discriminate. That right is indistinguishable from our more commonly understood rights. It comes into best focus when applied to freedom of association. If we forfeit that freedom when we engage in commerce, then we never had it in the first place. Neither do we have the right to engage in commerce as we choose; that devolves to a case of licensure, in which the privilege of doing business is bestowed or withheld by a government, according to conditions set by a legislature or a court. If that implies a right to keep you from earning the living that sustains your life or the lives of your loved ones, so be it. The Omnipotent State’s interests always come first, don’t y’know.

     Think about it.

---

     No doubt some leftist will seize on the above sentiments and immediately accuse me of bigotry: “You hate blacks and gays! You want to discriminate against them!” Time was, I’d have immediately said, “No, I don’t.” The years have taught me the folly of that approach. Today I reply, “So what if I do?” The apoplexy this often causes my accuser is entertaining enough to sell tickets.

     Americans’ rights are gone. We’ve given ground before the encroachments of government and the relentlessness of the Left’s propaganda, such that merely an accusing word is enough to start us backing away from the defense of our rights. The underlying malady is the desire for others’ approval: the need to be seen as “nice guys” even by those who hate us passionately and always will.

     It’s time to revive the prickly persona that has no truck with others’ interference in our preferences and choices. Along with that must go a certain truculence, even if the Left’s bien pensants should vilify us for it. Why should we care what they think of us? Aren’t our rights infinitely more important?

     It might be late in the year for it, but here’s a new resolution for 2015 even so: This year, be a prickly son-of-a-bitch, and proud of it.

     Will Grigg sees the necessity. Do you?

War Assets

The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney lays it out for you:

After millennia of marriage being uncontroversially a union between one man and one woman, and after a decade of electorates in most states (and President Obama in 2008) upholding that traditional definition, the Left has used the courts to redefine the institution. People are fired for having taken the losing side. On college campuses, the current fights are about banning even the articulation of traditional views.

Amidst this culture-war dynamic, the Hobby Lobby decision and Indiana's RFRA don't represent any slide down a slope towards religiosity or individual liberty. Instead, our culture is speeding down the icy Left slope of the cultural mountain, and a few conservatives are now dragging their hands on the ice to slow the acceleration — and the Left is crying that this will send us catapulting back uphill.

Religious liberty is the terms of surrender the Right is requesting in the culture war. It is conservative America saying to the cultural and political elites, you have your gay marriage, your no-fault divorce, your obscene music and television, your indoctrinating public schools and your abortion-on-demand. May we please be allowed to not participate in these?

But no. Tolerance isn't the goal. Religious conservatives must atone for their heretical views with acts of contrition: Bake me a cake, photograph my wedding, pay for my abortion and my contraception.

Please read it all, and reflect on this: even during the years when virtually every young man was drafted when he reached 18 years of age, the Selective Service Act permitted exceptions on the grounds of “conscientious objection.”

Some total wars are more total than others. One side in this war intends to leave no survivors.

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Remember Donald Rumsfeld saying, some what ruefully, that “you go to war with the army you have” -- ? Well, as it happens, that observation only applies at the very start of a war. If the war is at all protracted, “the army you have” can change dramatically, and in several ways. Look at the transformation of Britain’s army over the course of World War I for an excellent example.

Few of us in the Right would have predicted that the Left would succeed in turning victim status into a war asset. Yet it is so – so much so that even after having won on the legal battlefield, the Left’s forces continue to wield that status as a most potent weapon. It’s the bayonet with which they’re busily killing off our wounded.

Indeed, victim status is so greatly cherished by the Left that even to speak against it is regarded as intolerable. Take note of what the despicable Ed Schultz, having somehow inveighed Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson onto his contemptible program, feels he must do to prevent his opponent from scoring with the audience:

It’s not just on college campuses that the Left seeks to prevent the expression of contrary views. And it will get much worse before it gets better.

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John Conroe’s remarkable recent novel Forced Ascent contains an early, high-impact depiction of a confrontation between protagonist Chris Gordon, who is literally an angel sent among men to protect us from being overrun by demons, and representatives of the federal government:

    “What we have is a national threat to security wielding unknown abilities or technology, operating at random inside the borders of the United States with no checks or balances. Mr. Gordon here has served his country well over the last few years, but there is nothing preventing him from going off the deep end and assaulting that very same country. How do you think the people sworn to protect this nation from any and all threats feel about a rogue operator who can do the things he can do? It’s frankly worse than allowing test tubes of Ebola to be carted about at random by any federal employee that wants one,” Alexis said.
    “Again… what is it you want?”
    “We want controls in place to ensure Mr. Gordon’s compliance,” she said.
    “And those are?” Darion asked while my stomach got tight and twisted.
    “We want young Miss Velasquez in Federal custody. We want a… monitor implanted in Mr. Gordon’s body to track and isolate him. We want him shadowed by government agents at all times.” She sat back, watching us for reaction. I had plenty but I somehow managed to control my initial reaction—or more importantly, Grim’s response. The images in my mind were bloody. Very, very bloody.
    “No, no, and no,” Darion responded. “Why would Mr. Gordon acquiesce to these ridiculous demands?”
    “Because failure to comply will constitute a declaration of intent to commit further acts of terrorism and war against the United States,” McFeeney interjected. He paused for dramatic effect, which was ruined when footsteps thundered down the hallway outside accompanied by howls of pre-teen laughter.
    “And once you’ve decided you’re at war with my client, how do you see that playing out?” Darion asked, smiling at the sounds of the kids.
    “The only way it can, Darion. With the death of Mr. Gordon and all he holds dear. Nobody can hold out against the full weight and power of the United States Government.”

Mind you, Gordon had committed no “acts of terrorism.” He’d exorcised demons, executed werewolves and vampires that had conspired to wreak slaughter among humans, and had destroyed a corrupt, quasi-governmental organization that had kidnapped several innocents, his goddaughter among them. That was of no interest to the federal government; what it wanted was control of his powers. The rest of the novel depicts the consequences of Gordon’s refusal to accept the federal leash.

So also with the Left. If you refuse its leash, its minions will bend all their efforts to destroying you, one way or another. And at this time, the Left is in full and unopposed control of the federal government of the United States.

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There is only one countermeasure to the Left’s steady elimination of every right except the rights to sodomy and abortion. It’s a costly one, one that most persons – even most persons reading this screed – will recoil from, on the grounds of self-preservation.

We must rehabilitate and reinvigorate discrimination.

To discriminate is to apply a standard and make a consequent choice. It’s to say “That isn’t acceptable,” and to act on one’s verdict. It’s the ultimate expression of individuality, for no one can set your standards for you but you.

Do you make love to your spouse but not to your garbageman? You’ve discriminated against your garbageman.
Do you prefer lettuce and spinach to kale and collared greens? You’ve discriminated against the growers of the latter vegetables.
Do you drink wine but not beer? You’ve discriminated against Amstel, Coors, Heineken and Anheuser-Busch.
Do you choose your own friends? You’ve discriminated against people you find insipid or annoying.
Do you prefer FOX to MSNBC? You’ve discriminated against Leftist propaganda.

This is anathema to the Left. You’ve deviated from its dogma. You’ve dared to chart your own course. You’ve proclaimed yourself a free man. Who could possibly know what you might choose to do next? Off with your head!

John Conroe’s bit of fiction above is coming ever nearer to reality as we speak, except that every free man in America sits in place of Chris Gordon. And none of us have the powers or longevity of an angel. As far as I know, anyway.

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They who worship power and are determined to have it all – the very definition of the Left – cannot and will not tolerate your individuality. What if it were to infect others? Who knows what might follow? Their entire program could totter and fall. You must be brought into line; failing that, you must be eliminated as a threat to the body politic.

Take it seriously, folks. This is what they intend. It’s what they’ve always intended. And it’s become so clear that to deny it constitutes a willful refusal to see the world around you.

Resist while it’s still possible. No matter the cost.

A Thought For Thursday

[This morning’s reading brought me two exceedingly striking articles. I dithered over which one should serve as the launching pad for today’s tirade, but only for a moment. I’ve decided to save the one with wider scope and farther-reaching implications for tomorrow. I promise you: it won’t spoil between now and then. -- FWP]

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Hearken to Kevin Williamson:

One of the remarkable aspects of the recent spate of infantile left-wing protests that caught Jim Geraghty’s attention is that they are directed at private life and private spaces rather than at public institutions and public affairs. One expects protests at city hall; in New York, we even endured the unseemly spectacle of one of those shut-down-traffic protests conducted by the city council itself, as though its members did not do enough to inconvenience the residents of that city. Protests in front of the police station or the (hideously fascist-looking) Federal Reserve building are part of the normal course of affairs in a democratic republic with free speech and a strong tradition of lively discourse....

In New York City, protesters invaded the Pershing Square Café across the street from Grand Central Terminal, which is one of the more diverse spots in heavily segregated Manhattan, catering as it does to commuting 53-year-old lawyers from Fairfield County, who check any number of different demographic boxes.

The message these protests send is that there is no private space — and, therefore, no private life — so far as this particular rabble is concerned. It’s the familiar Trotsky conundrum: You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.

Does this plaint sound at all familiar?

Do you know what the victimists fear above all else? Being ignored. It’s why they put so much time and effort into getting in front of every microphone, every camera, and every so-called journalist in the world. If a sufficient preponderance of us were simply to ignore them, their influence would drop to approximately zero. Indeed, the power of that tactic – what Arthur Herzog called in The B.S. Factor the “mass yawn” – is so staggering that it can even nullify state and federal laws, without recourse to the political process....

The political class and its hangers-on fear exactly the same things as the victimists: being ignored. Were they to become aware that no one is paying any attention to their enactments and decrees, they would soon slink away. Some might even enter productive trades, perhaps as cheap prostitutes.

(Dear Lord, please strengthen me against the rising inclination to post a simple “I told you so” here each and every morning. It’s so wearying to be out in front of the curve all the time. Yours truly, Francis W. Porretto, Curmudgeon Emeritus to the World Wide Web.)

The pole star of the politician is the same as that of the political activist: politicization. Both of them want to destroy any notions the rest of us might have about whatever matter they/re hot and bothered about being a matter for private decision-making, in which politics and government have no place. After all, how could they possibly be significant if we refuse to allow them to coerce us about a matter around which they’ve wrapped their hearts and souls?

Ignoring them is getting harder all the time. But that’s not their fault; it’s ours.

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Quite a long time ago, at the late, much lamented Palace of Reason, I penned an article about a friend of a friend – a hairdresser – who reported being at her wits’ end because of customers whose behavior would once have gotten them the “bum’s rush,” with neither apology nor consequences. I mentioned an old sign that once appeared in every commercial establishment, but which one never sees these days:

We Reserve The Right
To Refuse Service To Anyone

The reason those little signs are no longer commonplace is that it’s illegal to refuse service to the members of various state-protected groups. Indeed, the enforcers of that law – the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – are so vicious and so relentless that there’s almost no behavior short of felony assault that the law will concede as a justification for refusing service. Worse, even when the justification is indisputable the shopowner who tries to enforce his will personally will always be on the dirty end of a lawsuit – civil, criminal, or both.

It’s often been said that “Hard cases make bad law.” There is some truth in the concept, but at least as often it’s the attempt to make law to redress some condition that’s generally deemed undesirable that elicits the hard cases. That’s given rise to an alternative maxim: “Bad law makes for hard cases.”

What constitutes a “bad law” is the question before us.

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Let’s return to Kevin Williamson’s article for a moment:

During the Civil Rights Movement — the real one, not the ersatz one led today by Jesse Jackson et al. — politics did genuinely intersect with brunch. On one side of the issue were people who argued that the social situation of African Americans at the time was so dire and so oppressive that invasive federal action was necessary. On the other side were well-intentioned conservatives such as Barry Goldwater and any number of writers for this magazine, who argued that if the reach of Washington were extended into every mom-and-pop diner in the country, it would constitute a step toward the abolition of private life, that the natural and inevitable extension of the principle at work would ensure that rather than being treated as private property, businesses reclassified as “public accommodations” would be treated more like public property, that the greasy snout of politics eventually would stick itself into every last precinct of what had been considered the sphere of privacy beyond the public sector.

As it turns out, both sides were right.

That last sentence undermines an otherwise near-perfect exercise in punditry. It’s impossible that both sides could be right, by the very nature of things. Either a “mom-and-pop diner” is private property or it isn’t; you can’t have it both ways. Williamson’s desire to find some way of accommodating two inherently contradictory positions is untenable. It expresses a desire not to offend that the conflicting demands of the “two sides” have made impossible.

The politicization of commerce didn’t start with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, of course. It has much deeper roots than that. But every stroke in that direction has weakened the most important protection of individual rights this country possesses: the principle of unfettered private discretion over one’s private property.

And every last speck of it was deliberate.

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”Bad law” is an envelope that subsumes many more specific sub-categories. However, laws that should not have been made in the first place because they infringe on private rights are surely included therein. The problem here is twofold:

• A strong consensus among the citizens that “something must be done” about some situation;
• Politicians’ eagerness to politicize whatever they can get their claws around.

When I wrote about the importance of the black market a few days ago, I thought principally in terms of specific goods and services that political forces had chosen to ban, control, or restrict by regulation. Yet there’s a form of “black market” that’s arisen in response to supposedly well intentioned “anti-discrimination” statutes. It poses the greatest of frustrations to the politicizers, because it’s inherently beyond their reach. It’s the exercise of “consumer discrimination:” individuals’ personal decisions to live here rather than there, to work at this firm rather than that one, and to patronize or not to patronize a commercial establishment according to the personalities and characters of the frequenters thereof.

Is there a racial correlation? Of course. Is that deplorable? Not necessarily. Think about it:

• Would you willingly drink in a tavern whose other patrons habitually view you as hostile?
• Would you willingly work among persons who consistently treat you with contempt?
• Would you choose to live in a neighborhood overwhelmingly populated with such persons?
• Had you the means to avert all those conditions, wouldn’t you use them?
• Would the skin colors or ethnic heritages of those hostile, contemptuous persons matter to you?

Only a completely totalitarianized nation can overcome “consumer discrimination.” It must dictate every decision made by every one of its subjects. It must leave them no power to resist. It must punish attempts to deviate so surely, swiftly, and harshly that the very thought of nonconformity is all but erased from the nation.

I doubt there are any left-liberals among the regular readers of my screeds, but if there are, tell us all, please: What do you, whose political allies are constantly screaming that “the personal is the political,” propose to do about any of that? And what will you say when the goring of oxen gets around to yours?

Think it over.