Classical Values :: Validate your identity at the polls!

January 11, 2008

Validate your identity at the polls!

Via Dr. Helen, Jonah Goldberg explains how the culture war drives politics:

What Americans really want when they look into a politician's eyes is to see their own images reflected back, like in Narcissus' pool. The presidency in particular has become the highest ground in the culture war. Americans want a candidate who validates them personally. "I'm voting for him because he's a hunter like me." "I'm backing her because she's a woman too." "I'm for that guy because he's angry like me." Such sentiments have colored the presidential contest for so long, they've saturated it like stain into wood.

The culture war has become a fetid swampland of competing versions of identity politics. While identity politics may have started with things like race, sex, and sexuality, it spread like a cancer to include even more irrelevant things like diets (vegans) attitudes, and lifestyles. The common thread is the (IMO) childish notion that because your group does something or thinks something, that other people must not merely tolerate that, but affirm and embrace it. This leads to absurd situations. Gays who demand affirmance of their lifestyle see those who believe their lifestyle is sinful in much the same way those who believe their lifestyle in sinful see gays.

If you disagree with me, you are oppressing me! That this is irrational (as well as a long term threat to free speech) does not prevent the idea from being emotionally attractive, so it grows. As one group becomes entitled, another group will spring up and demand the same "rights." If homosexuality is a lifestyle that has to be "validated," then religious opposition to homosexuality must also be "validated."

That's because if you disagree with me, you're discriminating!

Well, you are. Disagreeing with anyone on anything constitutes an exercise in discrimination. (But because several generations have been educated and trained to believe that discrimination is a synonym for evil, disagreement is increasingly seen as an inherently wicked thing. Unless, of course, you're surrounded by like-minded types and you can claim you're all being mutually oppressed by those who disagree. Victims are still allowed to disagree with their oppressors.)

Illogical as this stuff is, it certainly should have nothing to do with how presidents are selected. As Dr. Helen concludes,

Choosing understanding and false empathy over policy and hard decisions is not the way to choose a president.

But that's the way it's being done. (In both parties, unfortunately.)

I worry that identity politics will be our undoing.

Hmm...

Maybe I should form a new identity group consisting of people opposed to identity politics. That way, the new "group" could accuse all the rest of discrimination, and demand the right to be left alone in peace.

(Nah, I guess that would be too much of a utopia....)

posted by Eric on 01.11.08 at 01:30 PM

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Comments

I identify with that. Can I join?

M. Simon · January 11, 2008 01:42 PM

Discrimination is a higher cognitive faculty. To be always agin' it is to be--stupid.

Brett · January 11, 2008 06:30 PM

As one group becomes entitled, another group will spring up and demand the same "rights." If homosexuality is a lifestyle that has to be "validated," then religious opposition to homosexuality must also be "validated."

On the other hand, Eric, homosexual are discriminated against, both on a legal and on an everyday basis. And as long as that is true, pointing out that some other group's "beliefs" contribute to that discrimination is certainly not beyond the pale.

Although I do agree that none of that particularly has anything much to do with the Presidential election, which has (as I point out elsewhere) apparently devolved into a quagmire of accusations of racism and sexism.

Bill Quick · January 11, 2008 10:35 PM

Not only is pointing it out not beyond the pale, I personally can't stand the mindset, as I've pointed out countless times -- with Matt Barber -- who of course feels discriminated against:

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2006/08/i_dont_know_how_1.html

More on Barber:

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/12/post_545.html

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/11/agreed_god_hate.html

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/08/the_evolution_o.html

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2005/06/thanks_to_an_an.html

And there's Dinesh D'Souza:

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/11/galileos_bad_fa.html

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/03/post_269.html

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/01/why_i_still_hat.html

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/01/post_207.html

Etc.

The nicest thing I can say about them is that they have their First Amendment rights. But the right not to be discriminated against is trickier, and it works both ways.

Eric Scheie · January 11, 2008 11:01 PM

Nice stuff, Eric. I'd read some, but not all. I've bookmarked this page for future reference. Thank you.

Bill Quick · January 11, 2008 11:56 PM

I'm as guilty as anyone. If a certain politician belongs to a church that gives an award to Jew haters I'm certainly OK with that. Or if it was found that he was close to a real estate guy who let his tenants go cold in winter due to non payment of utilities. I'm fine with that.

I am also OK with making that fact public knowledge.

Just as I am OK with making the contents of a certain politician's newsletter public.

If people want to discriminate for or against a politician based on their associations or writings I'm OK with that.

In fact I might just blog it.

M. Simon · January 12, 2008 02:50 AM

M., I am multiply on record advocating for an utterly total transparency as far as politicians go - that if you choose to run for public office, you forego every single claim to privacy you might desire, and stand completely naked before the world - your entire history, your current state, your friends and associations, your most private beliefs, your personal diaries, everything.

Why?

Because you are asking the people to give you power over them on their behalf. In that situation, the people have an absolute right to decide (and vote) based on whatever criteria they wish to use.

Not vote for you because you are ugly, or Asian, or female, or punched Sally in the mouth when you were five, or anything.

That is implicit in the way we conduct our elections by secret ballot. I might vote for a candidate based on his stated policy on illegal immigration, but that doesn't mean I have the right to deny you the ability to vote against the same candidate because you don't like the kind of suits he wears, or the color of his skin - or something he did to his sister forty years ago.

Bill Quick · January 12, 2008 12:41 PM

The usual response to this, by the way, is a horrified rebuttal to the effect that if this were the case, we would never get any good candidates to run.

To which, in the same vein as "You call this living?" I reply: "You call these good candidates?"

Bill Quick · January 12, 2008 12:43 PM