E-Pluribus | February 23, 2024
Equality and its discontents; the indictment of a journalist; and WWJC.
A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
George Case: Equality Is Not Immunity
Is equality all it’s cracked up to be? The short answer is yes, equality being an idea indispensable to the founding of our country. But it’s not always what those seeking it expect. George Case explains at Quillette.
In a 2016 New Yorker profile of first-time American voters, a young respondent explained why he was planning to cast a ballot for the unlikely upstart Donald Trump: “The thing about the word ‘racist’ is that every time it gets used it loses meaning. For the past decade or two, it’s been used by people on the left as a kill shot. That just kills your argument, no matter what you’re trying to say. You’re a racist and therefore you’re evil and therefore you lose. But I think a lot of people are noticing that it doesn’t work that way anymore. . .”
Whatever the wisdom of the voter’s electoral preference, he was correct that 2016 was not 1959. Near the core of today’s bitterly contested politics is a dispute over just how much social justice is necessary, not the necessity of social justice itself. No one, after all, is calling for a return to slavery, or for a repeal of the franchise for women, or for homosexuality to be once again criminalized. No one seriously wants to bring back the standards of 1959; indeed, most of the adults who set those standards are no longer alive.
Instead, the debate now turns on whether the response to objections of specific groups should be single institutional or legislative changes—which have to a large extent already been realized—or an ongoing growth industry.
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Consider the following range of issues that remain pressing crises to some but closed cases to others: Racism. . . Sexism. . .Homophobia/Transphobia. . . Antisemitism. . .
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Uniting each of these disconnects is the difference between weakness and strength. Before, even the mildest instances of racism or sexism—a teacher singling out a student’s ethnicity or a boss hitting on a secretary—came from an imbalance of authority. More injurious by far was the white judge sentencing a non-white defendant, the straight jock beating up a gay nerd, or the WASP recruiter rejecting a Jewish applicant. Nowadays, the teacher, the boss, the judge, the jock, and the recruiter are themselves just as likely to be ethnic, female, non-white, gay, or Jewish. Demographics that carry an ancestral recollection of disadvantage are still invoking it long after the disadvantage has evolved away or been legislated out of existence.
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Elsewhere, perhaps, the invocation is simply force of habit: protesters reflexively drawing on a universal sympathy for the lowly or the helpless without acknowledging that those on whose behalf they speak are no longer among them. As much as anything, complaints of racism, sexism, homophobia, or antisemitism may just be misapprehensions of impartial conditions that could apply—rightly or wrongly, perfectly or imperfectly—to anyone. Being judged by the content of one’s character, and not by one’s color, sex, orientation, or religion, is judgement nonetheless. People who once clamored to be considered as equals are finding out just what that consideration entails—that unwelcome ideas are not necessarily hateful ones, that equality is not immunity, and that you can still lose on a level playing field.
Read the whole thing.
Freedom of the Press Foundation: Indictment of journalist raises serious First Amendment concerns
Generating sympathy for a journalist might seem a tough row to hoe these days, but the Freedom of the Press Foundation says that everyone should be disturbed at what happened recently in Florida. Criminal charges for news gathering and disseminating should be enough to give anyone pause.
Federal prosecutors in Florida have obtained a disturbing indictment against well-known journalist Tim Burke. The indictment could have significant implications for press freedom, not only by putting digital journalists at risk of prosecution but by allowing the government to permanently seize a journalist’s computers.
While the indictment is short on facts, it reportedly arises, in part, from Burke’s dissemination of outtakes from a 2022 Tucker Carlson interview with Ye, formerly Kanye West, where Ye made antisemitic remarks that Fox News chose not to air. Ye’s antisemitism has been global news ever since. The indictment, which also alludes to sports-related content Burke allegedly intercepted, charges Burke with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and with intentionally disclosing illegally intercepted communications.
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[T]he indictment against Burke does not accuse him and his source of hacking into any servers, or deceiving anyone, to get the outtakes or any of the other content he allegedly intercepted. Nowhere does the indictment allege that either the footage or the login credentials were not publicly available. Instead, it accuses Burke and the source of “using the internet to search protected computers” and “scour[ing] the protected computers for electronic items and information they deemed desirable.”
The indictment threatens journalists’ ability to gather information online by implying that they have a previously unrecognized duty to ask for express permission to use information they find posted on the internet. It does so by accusing Burke and his source of "steal[ing]" information they found online merely by using it “without securing any authorization or permission.”
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Finally and shockingly, the indictment seeks to require Burke to forfeit a website domain and computer equipment if convicted — essentially the contents of his newsroom. The forfeiture demand would not be limited to content at issue in the indictment, which would already be unprecedented, but would extend to any unpublished material, notes, and communications stored on those computers, regardless of whether they relate to any alleged crime.
Read it all here.
Alex Small: Whom Would Jesus Cancel?
Charles Sheldon’s 1896 novel In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? popularized the ubiquitous acronym WWJD. At Inside Higher Education, Alex Small explores the question Whom Would Jesus Cancel? in light of the firing of a lecturer at Catholic University of America.
Faith strong enough to survive in the world is strong enough to encounter contrary ideas in the classroom. Viewpoint diversity is inherent to lived faith. Charitable work has exposed me to more varied opinions than are heard in faculty lounges. Helping in homeless shelters means rubbing shoulders with volunteers and clients from every walk of life. The volunteers include conservative Christians who think Catholics are insufficiently devout and secular leftists who would never set foot in even a progressive church. The clients are even more varied in personalities, beliefs and experiences. Charity, however, brings these disparate personalities together.
I venture that many CUA students contemplate service vocations, and working with people of every ideological extraction is part and parcel of humanitarian work. So, by all means, ask abortion doulas why they do what they do and why people seek their aid. Understanding aids cooperation.
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My argument is no different from what I would say to left-wing law students protesting conservative speakers. The reality is that they share this world with conservatives, who currently hold a majority on the Supreme Court. This makes understanding conservative ideas essential for understanding our society and our legal system, and understanding the system is a prerequisite for changing it to more fully align with students’ own values.
I venture that many religious conservatives would endorse my reproach of left-wing students who shout down right-wing speakers, and I hope they see similar value in intellectual diversity that embraces left-wing views, even views sharply contradicting Church teaching. Those teachings should help us navigate a wide world, not isolate us from fellow humans.
Indeed, no less a religious authority than Jesus was willing to address opposing viewpoints. Some of his most famous parables on forgiveness and universal brotherhood were responses to skeptical questioning. The parable of the Good Samaritan begins with a legal scholar asking which people are or aren’t our brothers and sisters. Jesus could have shunned and shamed (biblical cancellation!) someone seeking confrontation, but instead he told a tale in which a person of a different religious background was a stranger’s true brother.
Read it all.
Around Twitter (X)
Christopher Rufo draws a straight line between DEI and Harvard’s plagiarism scandals:
Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla sparked a Twitter firestorm with comments on “Christian nationalism” and rights. While additional context helps, John Shelton goes into more detail on what Przybyla is still missing:
And finally, the New York Times decided to hit the presidential age question head on.