White privilege. Male privilege. Christian privilege. Cisgender privilege. On and on the left insists that there is privilege and that privilege must at the very least be challenged, and ideally be eradicated so that “equality” can be ushered in.
They never define equality and for the most part won’t define which equality, that of opportunity or that of outcome, they prefer. Equality of outcome is a province of Marxist ideology. Even though the left in recent years has emerged comfortable with socialism and communism, they haven’t become comfortable enough to confess their admiration of communists like Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and so on.
It’s worth noting that last year as the left emulated Mao and sought removal of memorial statues deemed unfavorable toward their ideology, nothing was ever said about five Lenin statues that stand in American cities. One is in Manhattan. Another in Seattle. It’s not as though the left didn’t know they were there. New York and Seattle are ideological fever swamps of leftist thought.
Ideology. Shouldn’t any ideology be allowed to present itself openly in free societies? Shouldn’t exploration of political thought be a little like going to a farmer’s market and marveling at the diversity of sustenance offered? Explore the offerings. Dig deep into things you think might resonate with your appetite. Give everything a chance even if some of it is gross and outside your wheelhouse. Why is that no longer so in our society?
Ideological privilege is the one privilege the left doesn’t want to talk about. Ideological privilege is why Antifa can vandalize college campuses, assault people at political rallies, and get away with all of it. Ideological privilege is why the mainstream media injects race into every story they run. It’s why four students of the more than 3,200 at the Parkland High School get to dominate media attention. It’s why the DNC can sue Russia, WikiLeaks, and the Trump campaign alleging Russian collusion in the 2016 election and not appear deranged in the process.
Ever notice how there are about five stories the mainstream media run in cycles about Trump. Right now we’re somewhere between Stormy Daniels and whether Trump plans to fire Mueller. Both segue into the “did Trump obstruct justice” story. When that broken record stops generating revenue for big media, they’ll talk about Trump’s fitness for office. Lately the left has been talking about Trump’s moral fitness for office.
Isn’t it strange that the left, which for generations has insisted that virtually every immorality imaginable is actually an acceptable life-style choice, now posture as American Ayatollahs of what and who is and is not moral. This is the same left that hated Rudy Giuliani for kicking hookers, sex shops, and junkies out of Times Square in order to recast that part of the Big Apple as family friendly. Now they assume the role they once assigned Jerry Falwell and then blamed him for pursuing?
After a week or so of “is Trump fit for office” it’ll be back to Russia collusion ever so briefly. By that time Stormy Daniels will be back in the news. Did you know she’s on tour right now? She needs to sell tickets to make money off her “Make America Horny Again” tour. (If you didn’t know about her tour you really need to question the media you consume). So Stormy needs to keep herself out there as much and as often as possible. Celebrity is money, folks. That’s why any given day some Hollywoodista tweets out something over the top and stupid – for a moment it grants that reprise from anonymity called celebrity.
The reason these same stories repeat with the regularity of slogans blared through loudspeakers at a North Korean re-education camp is ideological privilege.
I first realized there is ideological privilege when I engaged a university professor I’d seen on one of the shows. The professor in question insisted that Christian privilege existed, and Christians needed to give up some of their privilege to others. I had honest questions. I wanted to see the professor’s evidence. I wanted to see examples. Most importantly, I asked the professor to either identify a society, historical or contemporary, that had evened out its privileges, or to describe for me what such a society might look like. After all, the professor’s ideology, if implemented, might result in a dramatic paradigm shift for our country.
I was open to what the professor had to say but, just like when you go down to the used car lot and they want to sell you a car that “oh yeah runs real good”, I wanted to dig into the real deal underneath the fancy sales pitch.
In response to my first email, the professor sent me a bizarre paper he’d written. The only thing correct in it was format and grammar. From a factual perspective it was full of what I could call mistakes, but more accurately would refer to as conflation if not outright fabrication.
So I asked questions. In a free society, where all ideologies should have a shot at being heard and where we all ought to want to learn from each other, I thought it only natural to try and engage in discourse.
The professor’s reply back was terse.
So I replied back, hoping that as a learned individual who had chosen a life of academia as his vocation the professor would welcome discussion. Maybe I envisioned the two of us, a modern day version of Socrates and pupil, exchanging ideas and learning and eventually finding some sort of commonality.
The professor replied back with an even more terse “never contact me again” email. Why?
In the professor’s world, his ideology was right and mine wrong. Therefore, I was not his equal. I was three-fifths a man in his view. As with the slaves of old on plantations, in the professor’s view I needed to keep my mouth shut, stop espousing immoral thoughts, and accept the point of view he was pushing. After all, he was the master and I the subject. If I dared tread too far out of line and speak my mind in public, Antifa could assume the role of slavemaster with the whip to correct my non-conformity.
Now I understand how conservative college students feel at their schools where they know that any deviation from accepted ideology means instant derision if not threats of violence, whether from university administration via suspension or expulsion, or from fellow students in the Antifa sense.
Now I know why so many of us are reluctant to advertise our beliefs in a culture that accepts ideological inequality. The path of least resistance is the easiest, isn’t it.
As for ideological equality, there should never be equality of outcome. Where that has happened abject failure has followed irrespective of the underlying culture.
In free societies, there should always be equality of opportunity for ideologies. We should be able to peruse all of them, left or right, from the mundane to the truly insane. Healthy societies require that. Somehow, I fear our society isn’t as healthy as we think it is anymore.
Image: Excerpted from: https://pixabay.com/en/king-william-iii-unknown-artist-man-93199/
