Free To Obey

A while back I wrote a post examining why a society’s need to maintain public harmony in the face of increasing diversity necessarily comes at the expense of meaningful liberties. George Will takes up the same topic in his latest column, Conformity for diversity’s sake.

We read:

Illustrating an intellectual confusion common on campuses, Vanderbilt University says: To ensure “diversity of thought and opinion’ we require certain student groups, including five religious ones, to conform to the university’s policy that forbids the groups from protecting their characteristics that contribute to diversity.

Last year, after a Christian fraternity allegedly expelled a gay undergraduate because of his sexual practices, Vanderbilt redoubled its efforts to make the more than 300 student organizations comply with its “long-standing nondiscrimination policy.’ That policy, says a university official, does not allow the Christian Legal Society “to preclude someone from a leadership position based on religious belief.’ So an organization formed to express religious beliefs, including the belief that homosexual activity is biblically forbidden, is itself effectively forbidden.

…Here, however, is how progressivism limits freedom by abolishing the public-private distinction: First, a human right ”” to, say, engage in homosexual practices ”” is deemed so personal that government should have no jurisdiction over it. Next, this right breeds another right, to the support or approval of others. Finally, those who disapprove of it must be coerced.

…The question, at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, should not be whether a particular viewpoint is right but whether an expressive association has a right to espouse it. Unfortunately, in the name of tolerance, what is tolerable is being defined ever more narrowly.

Although Vanderbilt is a private institution, its policy is congruent with “progressive’ public policy, under which society shall be made to progress up from a multiplicity of viewpoints to a government-supervised harmony. Vanderbilt’s policy, formulated in the name of enlarging rights, is another skirmish in the progressives’ struggle to deny more and more social entities the right to deviate from government-promoted homogeneity of belief. Such compulsory conformity is, of course, enforced in the name of diversity.

The point: as social diversity increases, commonality decreases. In a Venn diagram plotting beliefs, customs, traditions, and social mores amongst a society’s various groups, as diversity increases there will be a smaller and smaller area in which all the circles overlap. In terms of public policy, enforcing “non-discrimination” maintaining “harmony” means that everything outside of that dwindling region must be excluded from the public square — requiring ever-increasing restrictions on liberty. We are reminded daily by our ruling elites that “our diversity is our strength”, but the truth — a truth that was simple common sense in a saner era — is that it comes at a heavy cost. What is intolerable to an ideology that sees Diversity as the greatest possible good is the simple, natural fact that discrimination — meaning, at its most basic, “we are this and not that” — is intrinsic to, and essential for, the very existence of culture itself.

Read the whole column here.

11 Comments

  1. the one eyed man says

    Let’s suppose that Vanderbilt has an all-white fraternity whose charter calls for excluding blacks. You’re OK with that?

    Posted November 3, 2011 at 12:18 pm | Permalink
  2. Malcolm says

    Let’s suppose they have a black-heritage fraternity that excludes whites, or a Hasidic fraternity that only admits Jews, or a women’s-issues club for women only. You OK with that?

    Posted November 3, 2011 at 12:19 pm | Permalink
  3. Malcolm says

    Nobody said this was easy. The point is that the more heterogenous the society, the more of a minefield it all becomes.

    Posted November 3, 2011 at 12:21 pm | Permalink
  4. the one eyed man says

    Actually I would have a problem with any of the examples you cite. The conflict is between the right of people to associate with other like-minded individuals, versus the principle that all men are created equal (shouldn’t it be equally? or created to be equal?), and hence invidious discrimination is nearly always wrong.

    I don’t think the fact that Vanderbilt is privately owned is relevant. They accept plenty of government money in the form of research grants, and as a university they pay no taxes. So I think there is a legitimate distinction to be made between a university and, for example, a privately owned golf club. Moreover, if as a society we believe in equality of opportunity, then the gateways to opportunity – such as the educational system – should be open to all on equal terms.

    So if a goy wanted to join the Hasidic fraternity, he should be allowed to do so, provided he abides by the rules and doesn’t eat baconchilicheeseburgers in the frat. The idea of college is to expand one’s horizons, not to restrict them. Moshe and Izzie would doubtless have much to learn from Biff and Scooter, and vice versa.

    However, I will graciously concede that this is a judgment call, and there are strong arguments to be made against my position.

    Posted November 3, 2011 at 12:59 pm | Permalink
  5. Malcolm says

    Well, what you’re saying, Peter, boiled down, is that the right to associate with like-minded individuals is effectively void. If Andrew Dice Clay wants to join Vanderbilt’s Humorless Sensitive Feminist Student League For Social Change, they have to let him in.

    You’re going to exempt private golf clubs? No blacks, no Jews, no women, no gays?

    All of this stuff just gets more and more difficult to manage as diversity rises.

    Posted November 3, 2011 at 1:10 pm | Permalink
  6. Malcolm says

    Added to this is the fact that less and less is considered “private”, and therefore outside the purview of governmental supervision, these days.

    Posted November 3, 2011 at 1:14 pm | Permalink
  7. bob koepp says

    I think the whole discussion gets derailed when people mutilate the notion of non-discrimination to require “the support or approval of others.” This is bonkers!

    Posted November 3, 2011 at 1:15 pm | Permalink
  8. Malcolm says

    Bonkers it is, Bob. And once that’s the goal — which it already appears to be — nothing far short of totalitarianism is capable of enforcing it.

    Posted November 3, 2011 at 1:16 pm | Permalink
  9. the one eyed man says

    Isn’t Andrew Dice Clay dead?

    I would exempt private golf clubs. Having an all-white club may be distasteful, but I don’t think it should be illegal.

    Posted November 3, 2011 at 1:16 pm | Permalink
  10. Malcolm says

    No, he isn’t dead, though his career certainly is. I think he failed to express sufficient “support and approval” for various oppressed groups.

    Posted November 3, 2011 at 1:20 pm | Permalink
  11. the one eyed man says

    I made the same mistake about Todd Rundgren: I thought he was dead too.

    Forgotten, but not gone.

    Posted November 3, 2011 at 1:43 pm | Permalink

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