George Takei, actor and political activist, ignited a furor recently when he excoriated Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over segments of the latter’s dissent in the recent Obergefell v Hodges case that recognized gay marriage as a right. Takei, who is gay and has been an activist for gay rights and gay marriage for years, took issue with Thomas’s statement that even slaves had dignity.
Here is the relevant excerpt from Thomas’s dissent:
Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. When the Framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which this Nation was built.
The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.
Here is Takei’s statement:
He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry. He doesn’t belong there. And for him to say, slaves have dignity. I mean, doesn’t he know that slaves were in chains? That they were whipped on the back. If he saw the movie 12 Years a Slave, you know, they were raped. And he says they had dignity as slaves or Ð My parents lost everything that they worked for, in the middle of their lives, in their 30s. His business, my father’s business, our home, our freedom and we’re supposed to call that dignified?
The furor has been over the “clown in blackface” allegory, but consider the disparity in viewpoints between the two men. Thomas asserts that dignity is inherent to the individual, and thus something the individual controls. Consider the character played by Alec Guinness in the movie The Bridge On the River Kwai. He and his men were forced to do labor, and he himself was put into a hot box in order to break his will. He did not, and he maintained his dignity and the dignity of his men despite horrific treatment. While the story goes on to provide a warning about pride run amok, the message about dignity remains.
Takei, on the other hand, shows that he considers dignity to be something conferred upon the individual by others, in this case the State. Dignity, in Takei’s view, isn’t something inherent to an individual, and therefore not under his control.
Thomas drew his view of dignity from the presumption, stated in the Declaration of Independence, that rights are inherent and unalienable. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, speech, religious belief, association, movement, et al, are rights inherent to the individual. Government can protect or abridge these rights, but absent government, they still exist. The same holds true for dignity. Government can treat us in a shockingly undignified manner, but it cannot take away our dignity if we choose not to let it.
Contrast this with a worldview that presumes rights are given to us by the government that rules over us. While, in practice, an oppressive government’s abridgment of rights, or a government’s ability to abridge rights, can be taken to mean that those rights don’t exist apart from government’s good will, when rights are defined in this manner, the list of rights grows to include “rights” that are not inherent to the individual. If rights are bestowed, then on can assert that they include things like food, clothing, shelter, health care, retirement, and transportation. In fact, these “rights” are asserted by some as being crucial to the basic dignity of the individual.
In order to provide these “rights” to an individual, however, something must be taken from other individuals. The rights of others must be abridged, and if we wish to maintain consistency in outlook, the dignity of those other individuals must be abridged as well. A statist mindset treats dignity as it does rights, and in doing so treats the individual as a non-entity with no inherent rights or value.
I followed Takei on Facebook up until this incident, after which I unfollowed him in protest (Takei ended up apologizing for his comment). While most of his postings were of a humorous and punny nature, he did use Facebook as a platform for political messages. Readers of this blog know I’ve been advocating in favor of gay marriage, and so I was happy when SCOTUS ruled as it did, and this put me and Takei on the same side of that issue. I don’t agree that the issue is about dignity, but that’s a matter for another day.
Takei, however, has also been an advocate for forced association, and cheered whenever a baker was forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding. I disagreed with his position on that issue, and understood it as a clear demonstration of Takei’s statist worldview. His remarks on dignity and about Thomas confirm this understanding.
Which worldview is better? One where the primacy of the individual asserts that human dignity is inherent and can only be lost, not taken away, or one where dignity is a quality conferred by others? Do you judge yourself solely by how your friends, neighbors and government judge and treat you, or do you assert ownership and dominion over yourself no matter what others say or do?
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