Of people, and faceless crowds of people

Something I wrote over five years ago when contemplating the thoroughly illiberal Critical Race Theory was brought to mind this morning by another writer:

11/11/18

But this morning we’ll look at another malignant contemporary concept, that of white privilege. This is purely and simply an exercise in assigning collective guilt and collective guilt has long been a preferred tool of fascist and socialist dictators. Well what are you doing with this assignment of collective guilt?

When you deny any group of people their own individual moral agency you effectively sever any connection between personal behavior and consequences. It’s not hard to understand that if you punish indiscriminately your subject cannot logically connect their actions with punishment or reward and will not appreciate why it is preferable to not be ill behaved. So this balm of collective guilt is somehow supposed to result in a better behaved society? Really? That makes no sense.

But it is decidedly easier to group people into classes and apply blanket observations than it is to contemplate both individual behavior and the collective product of all of those individual perceptions and agendas.

…

Tearing someone else down does not effectively benefit another individual, but it can be a useful tool for political leadership to cultivate passion within their following. Such leaders know this and I don’t expect to change their minds about anything.

But for an individual a better, or likely more fruitful, take is to consider that we all start out with various advantages and disadvantages and one needs to plan from where they are.

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And what reminded me of this is a post-script to the Claudine Gay affair that looks at the same thing from another angle. From Personal responsibility and pouncing Republicans:

"What Gay’s excusers, and Gay, are primarily doing, however, is avoiding personal responsibility. That’s the underlying principle of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) and Critical Race Theory (CRT). Accepting no responsibility means no merit, no standards to attain. No need to perform and no need to apologize. Every failure is someone else's fault. There are two types of people: oppressors and the oppressed, though there are many sub-victim groups within the latter. Oppressors can do no right, only evil. The Oppressed can do no wrong; they are eternally blameless and no standards of performance or character apply to them.  To them, personal responsibility is foreign. 

Among the essential lessons one must learn on the way to eventual adulthood is individual responsibility. No one is responsible for our failures, our lies, our excuses and evasions, but us. Refusing to take responsibility forever mires us in childhood and delusion. A nation of self-deluded children contribute to the degredation[sic] of America. They apparently also go to Harvard."

Classical Liberalism, which was prominent in Western political thought post-Enlightenment, and upon which the United States was founded incorporated subscription to values of constitutional republican government, individual civil rights, economic freedom, and spiritual freedom. Right and Left began to adopt their contemporary forms with the Industrial Revolution which saw the Left veer away from classical liberalism towards a collectivist view ultimately favoring an insular ruling class.

Collectivists vs. individuals; and the beat goes on...