The Middle is Always Evil

You may have read my last post and– in the event that you are a Libertarian– gotten the idea that Sharia courts in the UK are acceptable because in any dispute settled by such courts, both parties are consenting to give it the power to arbitrate their case. From the Times Online article:

“The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.”

So what if it is consensual?

I could make the argument that there is a strong possibility that men will force their wives to “consent” to a court more lenient to, say… Domestic violence. I could make the argument that if a man is beating his wife for failing to wear a scarf, it would not be very much of a stretch for him to force her to attend a particular court with him. I could make these arguments, but I will not. The proper question to ask about the Sharia court– or about anything, for that matter– is not: is it consented to or not, but rather: is it moral or immoral?

Yes, in order for a British Sharia court to hold any weight, it must be consented to by the parties in question, but this is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether or not they are moral institutions. As governmental bodies, do Sharia courts faithfully uphold man’s right to life, liberty and property? Are you muttering that it does not matter if man’s rights are protected, so long as everyone involved consents to their chains? If so, you are simultaneously holding the following two positions:

• That you believe the moral premises of the Sharia courts to be evil and in opposition to the fundamental rights of man, and:
• That the British government, an institution whose sole purpose is the protection of individual liberty, should enforce said evil.

You are giving your moral sanction to that which you know to be evil.

It does not matter that the slaves consent to their chains; what matters is that you believe that they should be chained by the very institution set up to protect them.

The fundamental error here is the belief that any action is permissible, so long as all parties involved consent to it. This is a position commonly held by Libertarians. While it is true that consent is a necessary requirement for morality, it is not the only requirement; it is not a proper standard by which to judge the morality of an action.

When a man chooses to abuse drugs or alcohol, he makes a conscious choice to do so, a choice that he felt was (out of all of his options) the best one for him at the time, given the context of his knowledge. It was an action that he consented to, that he wanted for himself, otherwise he would not have taken it. All of this is necessarily true about this man, but it doesn’t change the fact that it was the wrong choice. Just because he consented to it does not mean he was making the right decision about his life.

Consent as a moral standard is a necessary result of Libertarianism because it espouses no moral philosophy at all; it is simply the belief that man may do as he pleases, so long as he does not initiate the use of force against others. While this is fine as a political philosophy, it is morally non-prescriptive; it gives no answer to the question: How should I behave? The inevitable result of Libertarianism’s non-answer to this crucial question is an anything-goes mentality toward life, which is so destructive because in life, anything does not go. As Ayn Rand wrote,

Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment—so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences. (Italics mine)

There was once a time when I thought I’d never understand why Ayn Rand once said that she would rather be a Marxist than a Libertarian; I now understand her completely.

“Diversity Week” is a week that is set aside by my school in order to celebrate our diversity.

What is diversity, and why does it warrant celebration? Diversity is the state of being diverse. In order for a thing to be diverse, it must necessarily be made up of distinct characteristics, qualities, or elements. What does diversity mean in reference to a community, such as my school community? First we must define community. A community (in this context) is an interacting population of individuals in a common location. In such a context, diversity would then mean that these particular individuals, who make up our community, hold distinct characteristics, qualities, or elements. What is an individual? An individual is a single human, regarded as possessing a unique personality, who is considered either apart of or apart from a society or community. The above process of logical deduction shows us that every community is necessarily diverse; every person is an autonomous, unique individual that posses distinct characteristics, qualities, or elements. Diversity Week spits in the face of the true meaning of diversity, declaring that the only true standard of diversity is ethnic background, which is a racist and offensive claim.

To set the standard of diversity as one’s heritage and nothing more is to claim that it is only this trait that makes an individual unique. In other words, this means that as a school we are promoting a perverse form of racism that looks at people not as individuals with unique personalities and traits, but “groups” that are different from each other—why? Because of the color of their skin, and for no other reason. We do not celebrate people who enjoy different kinds of music or books or games or fashions or TV shows or ice cream flavors during diversity week; why do you think that is? I’m a white guy, and I’d be willing to bet that there are plenty of black guys out there who watch the same TV shows that I do, and who derive the same pleasures from the same kind of ice cream that I do—why then, during diversity week, are blacks singled out along with Hispanics, Asians, and all the other various groups? What do these arbitrary groupings mean about a person? Nothing. But the implication that is given every year during Diversity Week is that because a person looks different, they must think different because of it—otherwise why place an Asian girl in a different group than me? What makes the two of us different?

You might say to me, “But Bill, Diversity Week isn’t really about all that idealism you’re preaching of ‘diversity of character,’ or any such nonsense; I mean, what you say—it sounds nice in theory, but its really not very practical… And besides! Everyone knows that what Diversity Week is really about is celebrating the minorities in our school!”

These arguments are weak.

If what I am saying sounds nice in theory, then why hasn’t it been tried? Could we be so slothful as a society that we abandon true diversity, the diversity the individual human spirit and mind, as our ideal and replace it with the false diversity of the skin and the body simply because it is somehow more practical? Doubtful. It is far more likely that most of us have been deceived into believing that diversity is something that it is not. Celebrating diversity is not equal to celebrating “minorities” in our school. Who are these “minorities” and why do they deserve celebration, then, while I or some other white person does not? Here’s a fact that many of the proponents of Diversity Week are unaware of and fewer care to acknowledge: the smallest minority is the individual, the single person, and all true diversity flows from him—or her. Until we recognize this fact, there can be no celebration of diversity of any kind, anywhere.