One wonders when the human brain reaches such a point of absurdity, it simply can’t contain all the contradictions.
An example – decades ago, our federal government sought to create equality through unequal treatment by instituting race and gender set-asides, restrictions and so-called “affirmative action” programs (which were actually reparations). America’s academic institutions also adopted such perspective, although largely under coercion of government through bribery and extortion with public funds.
These “preferential” programs were based on discrete definitions of race and gender.
People can now “identify” as any race or gender. Social media allows up to 70 some-odd gender “identifications” and as society becomes more and more integrated, the boundaries of race become increasingly blurred. We have just had 8 years of a president who identified as black but in fact is bi-racial, having a black Kenyan father and a Caucasian American mother.
Talcum X (Shaun King) and Rachel Dolezal (or whatever she calls herself this week) – are both white people who “identify” as black. Bruce Jenner is clearly an Olympic medal winning dude who now “identifies” as female.
I would argue that, from the perspective or race and gender, society has taken a distinct libertarian turn without reasoning itself into it. The fact remains that people who seek to slice identity into smaller and smaller pieces are actually arguing for more individuality, a decidedly libertarian thing to do. Do your own thing, baby!
The issue is the distinctly non-libertarian facet is the desire and drive to force government to continue its inertia driven processes of preferential treatment based on race and gender. These deviant members of society seek to use the power of government to provide validation of their choices and force the greater society to accept them. That is the very essence of tyranny.
One cannot use collectivism and authoritarian control to create individualism and liberty. These are the two opposite poles of the societal magnet.
Rationally, if each individual can decide to identify as anything they want, no central authority can keep up. It is simply impossible to give special treatment to each individual based on who and what they think they are this week, any attempt to do so renders applications of laws arbitrary and capricious and instead of increasing equality, inequality is increased. The old adage applies – if everyone is special, no one is.
In a country of over 325 million people, the law of unintended consequences will always create permutations and combinations that result in infinite and insoluble contradictions. Somebody will always get hurt by government action.
The only answer is the one prescribed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – spoiler alert, it is called federalism. The Declaration notes that all men (also meaning women) are CREATED equal and our Constitution provides the structure to protect that equality by not getting government power involved in deciding societal battles.
In governance, the wisdom from the 1983 Matthew Broderick movie, War Games, seems applicable:
“The only winning move is not to play.”
Try a little federalism – unlike any form of collectivism, it works every time it is tried.
The Rio Norte Line 