July 28, 2016 at 8:32 a.m.
Extremism in the defense of liberty
Extremism in the defense of liberty
As we report in today's edition, Democratic state Rep. Dana Wachs was appalled that Kelly would call affirmative action the moral equivalent of slavery. The liberal Wisconsin One Now condemned Kelly's views on race and equality as "abhorrent," and its executive director, Scot Ross, went on to say that Kelly would work well with her fellow extremist on the court, Rebecca Bradley.
It is typical practice these days to call opposing viewpoints radical, extreme, and living outside the mainstream, i.e., a threat to the social order. The media engages in this political assassination every day with Donald Trump.
In fact, if you listen carefully to the media, there is no legitimate mainstream conservative philosophy these days, except for the house brand acceptable to globalism: If we run out of Obama, we can always use the Romney brand until we can get to the store for the real thing.
This brand of acceptable conservative politics - which is not really conservative but is more accurately the conservative wing of the globalist establishment - is dubbed by the media as traditional conservatism, true conservative, and conservative orthodoxy.
It is anything but, of course, but the point here is that any other viewpoint is labeled extremist. In other words, there's liberal globalism and conservative globalism and everything else is racist, sexist, culturalist - unworthy of even being debated.
The tactic is a way to legitimize only globalism and delegitimize every other viewpoint. Normally, such a tactic wouldn't be so dangerous, but when the state-run media embraces and uses it, as is the norm in the United States, it becomes dangerous.
All of which brings us back to Dan Kelly. Just how radical is his view equating affirmative action as the moral and constitutional equivalent of slavery?
As it turns out, not very.
It is the same position as that of U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, whom Kelly quoted. As Kelly points out, both affirmative action and slavery are both race-based and race-determinative, that is to say, they are both racist - the former designed to benefit a race and the other designed to subjugate a race.
Ah, but the liberals say, our smiley-faced racism isn't really racist because it is simply a tool to wipe out the disadvantages for one race caused by years of inequality and oppression. That is a legitimate argument, but it is certainly arguable.
Many believe, and they cite their evidence, that unfairly promoting and rewarding one race at the expense of others, rather than integrating all races fully into a society based on opportunity and merit, not only unfairly punishes the races newly discriminated against but sets the newly elevated and segregated race up for failure.
They also argue that permanent affirmative action further stigmatizes the preferred race by branding its members as incapable of success without preferential treatment.
The point here is not to say which point of view is right, it is to say that, in a society where classlessness and color-blindness are goals, both deserve respect as legitimate arguments that ought to be debated. Instead, affirmative action, like climate change, is a debate foreclosed.
It is settled political science, and, if you don't agree, you are an extremist.
And so it goes in today's America. If you are against gay marriage, it is not because of your religious beliefs or because you have an aversion to government defining marriage at all, it is because you are a homophobic redneck who should be cast out of society.
Debate settled. You are an extremist.
If you are against abortion, it is not because you believe life begins at conception and thus abortion is unacceptable murder, it is because you are a sexist pig who wants to enslave women.
Debate settled. You are an extremist.
If you are a constitutionalist, it is not because you want to uphold the fragmentation of government power that that document brilliantly decrees to preserve individual liberty, it is because you are bitterly clinging to bygone values such as nationalism, which we all know is another word for fascism. You might even be a domestic terrorist.
Debate settled. You are an extremist.
So if you are an American who believes all people should be judged by the content of their character and the quality of their work rather than by the color of their skin, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., and who wants government out of your wedding vows and bedroom, and who believes in the sanctity of all life, including the unborn, and who wants to preserve states' rights, national sovereignty, and individual liberty, then you are an extremist underserving of your viewpoints.
That's what the Democrats say, and that's what the media ratifies.
In such a society, only one viewpoint is legitimate. Such a society is called totalitarian.
As for affirmative action being the moral equivalent of slavery, it actually has its true roots in the beliefs of the radical reconstructionists in Congress just after the nation's Civil War. Their legislation disenfranchised thousands of former Confederates while allowing blacks to vote.
As Wisconsin Sen. James Doolittle summed up the sentiment of that "affirmative action," which he did not agree with, "the existing fabric of reconstruction legislation in general is to put the negro in power over the white race in all of the states of the South and keep him there."
That is affirmative action in its most naked and perhaps corrupt form, but the difference in that and slavery, as Kelly put it, was more in degree than in principle: The radical reconstructionists sought to enslave the former rebels and to make blacks the masters of the political plantation. The later and unintended consequence was the backlash implementation of Jim Crow laws.
Modern affirmative action was meant as a temporary way to level the playing field; permanent affirmative action can logically lead to the suppression of one race at the expense of another.
That history, logic, and potential outcome - as well as the possible unintended harm to the protected race - is well worth debating.
And so is gender identity, the constitution, abortion, and religious liberty.
Call us extremists, but, as Barry Goldwater once said, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
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