slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Liberal Aberration: Political Correctness and the Emergence of Group Rights

A variation of modern liberalism is popular among faculties at college campuses. Its adherents reject not only the idea of individual economic rights, but also the idea of individual rights as such. Instead, they believe that people enjoy rights and incur obligations as members of groups.

On this view, a b***k A******n should enjoy rights that are denied to w***e A******ns — not because of some injury or harm one has done to the other or because of some contract, but merely because one is black and one is white. Similarly, Native American Indians should have rights that a black does not have. A woman should have rights that a man does not have.

Adherents of this view believe there is no such thing as an individual right to freedom of speech or expression or association. What rights or privileges you have depend on what group you are a member of, and the state may properly enforce such distinctions. For example, speech that is permissible if the speaker is black might be actionable if the speaker were white, Asian or Hispanic, depending on how the speech affects the sensibilities of other b****s. Or if b****s or Hispanics, say, form groups and exclude others, that is generally permissible; but the same actions by a group of w****s or any of the European ethnic groups would probably be proscribed.

Assigning rights and responsibilities to groups rather than individuals is at the heart of collectivism. Political correctness is a sort of barnyard version of collectivism. In this sense, the type of liberalism that is popular on college campuses is far more consistent than mainstream liberalism. This version of liberalism rejects individualism as such.

Such consistency, however, exists only in the abstract. In practice, politically correct liberalism is anything but consistent. For example, the standard justification for giving group A more rights than group B is some injustice committed by B’s ancestors against A’s ancestors. Yet among the black students at Harvard University (all of whom presumably qualify for racial preferences), only one-third are unambiguous descendants of s***es. More than half are immigrants! Harvard and many other prestigious universities are assigning privileges to students not based on past grievances but on skin color alone.
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Conservative Aberration: Protectionism and the Rise of Tribal Politics

There is a strand of conservatism that rejects the thinking of mainstream economists for the last 200 years. As represented most visibly by columnist and sometime p**********l candidate Pat Buchanan, this group of thinkers wants government to impose tariffs and quotas and other restrictions to prevent foreigners from competing with domestic companies and their workers.

Yet as Adam Smith explained more than two centuries ago, trade does not reduce the number of jobs. Instead it changes the nature of work people do. Furthermore, trade is income enhancing. It makes citizens better off, on the average, than they otherwise would have been – although some individual incomes may fall as others rise in the process. So what Buchanan’s agenda is really about is not saving jobs or protecting incomes. It’s about saving some jobs at the expense of other jobs and preventing some people’s income losses at the expense of other people’s income gains.

Conservatives who hold these beliefs view the world from the right in exactly the same way as some trade unionists view the world from the left. They believe that people are entitled to their jobs for no other reason than that’s what they happen to be doing. They are entitled to their current incomes for no other reason than that’s what they happen to be earning.

Readers of “What Is Classical Liberalism?” will have no difficulty seeing that Buchanan’s views are a small scale version of the economic views of Franklin Roosevelt. Whereas Buchanan focuses on trade, Roosevelt understood that jobs and incomes are threatened by exchange as such. Whereas Buchanan wants to freeze in place the international economy, Roosevelt wanted to freeze in place the domestic economy.

The motives are the same. The vision is the same. And although these views today sometimes parade under the “progressive” label (at least when the advocate is on the political left), they are anything but progressive. The desire to freeze economic relationships and prevent the kind of creative destruction that is essential in all growing economies is the epitome of “reactionary” thought.

Buchanan is not only an economic protectionist, he is also a cultural protectionist who wants to stop the flow of immigration. There are legitimate (classical liberal) reasons to be concerned about i*****l i*********n — not the least of which is the practice of subsidizing it with free education, free medical care and other public services.

Buchanan’s main objection is different. He wants government to protect the culture from immigrants. Also, Buchanan would go much further than most other conservatives in restricting freedom of expression. Although they are viewed as poles apart, Buchanan actually has a lot in common with the politically correct crowd on college campuses. He believes, for example, that Christians, Muslims and Jews should not have to tolerate irreverent insults to their beliefs and has even hinted that it may be permissible to outlaw blasphemy.

PeterS

Too wacky for me...

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

It makes sense, in a psychotic sort of way. Those who don't wish to pull their own weight or behave fairly, need to have restrictions placed on everyone else's behavior, to eliminate the "light of reason", which would show our true a$$holishness.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Well, it is concerning ideological aberrations.