Posted on August 17, 2010

Ending ‘Discrimination’ Results in Totalitarianism

Christopher Grey, WorldNetDaily, August 16, 2010

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In its most basic form, discrimination is simply freedom of choice by an individual or group. Any expression of preference for one person or thing over another is a form of discrimination. The only way completely to eliminate discrimination would be to take away the rights of people to make choices.

This obviously is not consistent with living in a free society. Politicians and the courts have tried to dance around this conflict between freedom and anti-discrimination by making choices for people about which forms of discriminate are allowed and which are not allowed, but the list of choices (or discrimination) that is not allowed keeps getting longer.

That list of government-prohibited forms of discrimination now includes race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, and in some cases even weight. {snip}

However, there are many situations in which even these prohibited forms of discrimination may be entirely appropriate. Is it really a good idea for a jockey to be fat? Or for a lifeguard to be 80 years old? Or for a firefighter to be a paraplegic? {snip}

These may be extreme examples, but the point is that in a free society, no matter what the government tries to do, people still need to make choices about what they believe is right and wrong. Trying to take those rights away from people leads the government to be more and more involved and ultimately in control of private life. This is the definition of totalitarianism.

In practice, what really happens is that the government instead of people starts to make decisions about which forms of discrimination are allowed and which are not allowed. Discrimination still is happening, but now the government is in control of it rather than individuals.

A classic example of how this works is affirmative action. {snip}

Basically, the government has decided that it’s appropriate and even necessary to discriminate against certain people to make up for past discrimination against other people. Although this possibly could make logical sense for a period of time, it’s equally logical that if it goes on forever the group that supposedly was victimized by discrimination in the past almost certainly would end up eventually in a superior position. How long that reversal of fortune would take to happen cannot be determined, but affirmative action typically does not have an expiration date on it. This basically guarantees that at some point the group receiving preference actually will be the advantaged group and the group being discriminated against actually will be the disadvantaged group. This would basically amount to discrimination on top of discrimination or kicking people when they’re already down.

Arguably, this reversal of fortune already has happened at most top universities. Specifically, the most underrepresented group in most top universities in this country is white conservative Christians. This group represents nearly 50 percent of the U.S. population, but at most top universities less than 20 percent of the students (and less than 10 percent of faculty and staff) identify themselves in this category. This is an extreme disparity that if it applied to any other group would be cause for government- or at least school-mandated affirmative action. Similarly, Asians and Jews are extremely overrepresented in most top universities. This is because they tend to have much better qualifications than other applicants.

However, the groups receiving preferential admission are still African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and to some extent those with disabilities, gays and lesbians, and athletes. None of these groups receiving preferential admissions is nearly as underrepresented (and some actually are overrepresented) at these top universities as white conservative Christians, yet they continue to receive preference. What is the explanation for that except the obvious political bias of the universities?

As a concept, affirmative action often is applied very selectively and arbitrarily, but this is how government and totalitarianism usually operates. Governments make decisions based on politics, not fairness. Affirmative action has been applied aggressively to university admissions and staffing, public sector jobs, government contractors and programs, finance and lending, and graduate schools. It has not been applied at all to areas such as professional sports and entertainment. Why not? The superficial explanation is that there is not a political objective in applying affirmative action equally across different sectors of the economy. At a deeper level, it’s equally apparent that the overriding objective of affirmative action is to disadvantage whites and males and to advantage minorities and women. {snip}

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Other forms of affirmative action, such as for African Americans, may have more of a rational economic basis. Nevertheless, the reason for it is still the same. Politicians want to buy votes and this is an easy way to do it. The people who benefit from the preferential treatment or feel that they might benefit from it are much more motivated to support the politicians who favor it than the people who are disadvantaged by affirmative action. It’s a good political calculation.

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