Pay attention to the socio-cultural wars, and you’ll hear the word privilege a fair bit. Privilege used to be an innocuous word, used at times to denote honor and humility (“it’s my privilege to stand before you today”), to identify benefits associated with a particular situation (“membership has its privileges”) and, politically, to differentiate from “rights.” In the modern parlance of the social justice warrior (SJW), privilege is an epithet, often used as a blunt force instrument to intimidate and to end discussions. Check your privilege, a rebuttal that’s become so common as to be teetering on the verge of cliche, is an attack on any opinion that isn’t one with the SJW tribe and an an assertion that the opiner should look in the mirror, recognize that accidents of birth (typically race and gender) confer certain automatic benefits (the privileges), to humble himself, and retract an opinion that’s certainly and irreparably biased by privilege.
An adage notes “give an inch, they take a mile,” and so it goes with privilege. A current meme asserts another form of privilege, the privilege of being born to parents of means. The conclusion of the meme is akin to the old baseball metaphor “he was born on third base but thinks he hit a triple,” i.e. you didn’t earn that, it was given to you. The implication is negative, and the presumption is that anyone who’s at the top who didn’t start at the bottom is less deserving of being at the top that on who did. It is, as so many other social justice notions are, an external value judgment and a subordination (dismissal, even) of the individual to identity and group politics. It debases the achievement of someone who works hard, honestly and ethically but happened to be born into a good situation, and excuses the non-achievement of the lazy and malingering merely because they were born into bad situations. And, of course, it demands that the successful part with some of their success in order to balance the scales of privilege. At the bottom of all social justice notions, you will inevitably find demands for redistribution. Voluntary redistribution is never enough – it must be forced, and forced to a degree decided upon by, yep, the SJWs themselves.
This assertion of privilege in one’s socioeconomic familial position won’t be enough. It’s never enough. The SJWs will march onward, and their next target is looking more and more to be the privilege of one’s genetic intelligence.
We are each a scramble of our parents’ genetic codes, and that scramble produces a range of traits. Among them is our basic intelligence, and while there’s evidence that it can be affected to some degree by upbringing, it remains that some people are simply born smarter than others. This isn’t a derogation, it’s a fact. It’s also a juicy target for SJWs. If you’re the smart kid in the class, you won’t have to work as hard to understand a lesson or concept as your fellow students. It’ll come easier to you, you’re likelier to get better grades, you’re likelier to get into better schools, you’re likelier to end up in a higher paying, more powerful, more privileged career. Or, so an analysis that dismisses individuality goes. In reality, there are smart kids who achieve nothing due to laziness or distraction, and there not-as-smart kids who achieve greatness through hard work, discipline and focus. That doesn’t matter to SJWs, though – it’s the presumption that the less smart kids are inherently disadvantaged, and therefore must be attended to by liberal applications of social justice balancing that matters.
So, (and by many anecdotes it’s already happening) watch as the education of bright kids is subordinated to bringing the unintelligent students up to average. Watch as smart students are told that they need to forego teacher attention so that the less-bright kids can receive more attention. Watch as the goal in each class is to bring everyone up to an equal level of understanding, no matter that the bright kids could achieve so much more. Watch advanced programs dwindle in order to divert more resources into remedial programs. Watch the goal increasingly become least-common-denominator, and watch the bar become lower and lower. And, even then, watch as the bright kids get taught that came easy for you, you don’t deserve the A as much as your classmate.
One element of the American Dream is the concept of equality. Equality, however, is viewed very differently by some than by others. On the individualist side, we believe that should mean equality of opportunity. Everyone should get the opportunity to climb the ladder. Yes, the ladder will be taller and steeper for some, but that’s inevitable in any group of human beings. On the statist side, they believe it should mean equality of outcome. The top of the ladder should be achieved by all, and if that means putting obstacles on some ladders and forcing some to help others climb their ladders, it’s not only justified but required. This requires ignoring or dismissing the disparate goals and motivations of individuals.
The problem with equality of outcome is that we are individuals, we are different not just by accident of birth but in personality, goals, motives, motivation, hopes and dreams. The SJWs cannot get around this reality, no matter how much justice they force upon everyone else, and no matter how many privileges they identify and shame. Their efforts will fail, and even as they fail they will do real harm to our society. If society tells its brightest members that they should be ashamed of their smarts, and that they shouldn’t overachieve because it’s not fair to the less-smart, isn’t it less likely that society will advance? Could the next great medical breakthrough or the next great invention or the next brilliant business idea get lost to brain-shaming?
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C.S. Lewis
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