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This is my first time posting so I hope I'm posting in the right place, following all the local conventions, etc. This is something that I've had on my mind for a while and this seems like one of the only places on the Internet where this kind of thing can go.
I've been thinking about how laws are described, and how lacking and vague they often are.
Imagine you are a preschool teacher, supervising a group of children on the playground. You decide to teach them the rules of soccer. You tell them some of the basic rules, like how there are two teams, and that the goal of the game is to score points by putting the ball into the other team's goal. You also tell them that You Are Not Allowed To Use Your Hands.
As the game begins, you leave to attend to some other business. When you return shortly afterward, all the children come flocking to you. They eagerly clamor to tell you that Johnny broke a rule. Specifically, he used his hand to stop the opposing team from scoring a goal. Johnny readily admits this, adding that he is sorry. One by one, the children line up to tell you what they think should happen.
Alicia says that Johnny should be given five minutes of timeout.
Braden says that Johnny's team should lose the game.
Carrie says that Johnny's opponents should be awarded one "point".
Darren says that Johnny should have to apologize to everyone else and promise never to do it again.
Esther says that Johnny should be banned from playing soccer because he clearly can't follow the rules.
Given the rule that you gave them (You Are Not Allowed To Use Your Hands), which, if any, of the children is correct? There is a correct answer in "real" soccer – Johnny's opponents should be given a free kick (or penalty kick, depending on where the offense occurred) and Johnny should be given a red card for denying a goalscoring opportunity. However, you never told the kids that rule. You only said that You Are Not Allowed To Use Your Hands. There was no way they could have figured out what your intended punishment for the infraction was. There's no reason why their suggestions aren't equally valid, since even though you stated that an action was illegal, you failed to tell them its consequences. Ultimately, you will have to appeal to the meta-rule of The Rule Is Whatever I Say It Is Because I Am The Adult And I Am In Charge, and the children will have a valid grumble about the arbitrariness of your tyrannical rule. However, their suffering is not in vain, as you have learned from this experience and in the future, you will formulate your rules in the form of a trigger ("when someone uses their hands") and a consequence ("the other team gets a free kick"), saving future generations of preschoolers from untold agony.
Okay, great. Some hypothetical preschoolers are unhappy. When has this ever happened in real life?
Take the case of the Pine Tar Incident. On July 24, 1983, the Kansas City Royals played the New York Yankees in a game of baseball. In the eighth inning, Royals third baseman George Brett hit a two-run home run, putting the Royals ahead 5-4. However, opposing manager Billy Martin then pointed out to the umpire that the bat Brett used to hit his home run had pine tar applied in an illegal fashion. Specifically, he contended that Brett violated the following rule:
The umpires examined the bat and agreed with Martin, ruling Brett out and his home run void. A whole flurry of events followed, including the Royals lodging a successful protest where the league office overruled the umpire's initial ruling and ordered a replay of the final innings of the game, stating that the appropriate consequence of the infraction was to remove the bat from the game, not overrule the home run that had been hit with it.
The ultimate ruling isn't very important, but the point is that Bats Can Have Pine Tar In Some Places But Not Others is the same kind of rule as You Are Not Allowed To Use Your Hands. It's a bad, ill-formed rule, leading to ad-hoc rulings that leave those involved feeling justifiably aggrieved. A better rule would be something like Bats That Have Pine Tar In The Wrong Places Will Be Removed From The Game. Indeed, Major League Baseball (one of the best-run organizations in terms of writing good rules) has recognized this deficit and has since amended its rule to be along those lines. Other examples of well-formed rules include If The Ball Goes Out Of Play Then The Other Team Gets A Throw-In (in soccer) or If A Pitcher's Socks Are Too Colorful He Has To Change Into Different Socks (in baseball), which both specify a clear trigger and consequence.
Obviously, these concepts apply to laws made by governments just as much as it applies to rules for games. There is a reason why the earliest laws read something like He Who Puts Another's Eye Out Shall Have His Own Eye Put Out and not like Putting Another's Eye Out Is Not Allowed. Transparency is important to having a fair set of laws, and clear consequences provide that transparency. In the case of Hammurabi's code, it means most people can live free from the fear of recreational eye stabbers, since they know that most people will be hesitant to stab eyes if it means getting their own eyes stabbed in return. On the other hand, if the law was Putting Another's Eye Out Is Not Allowed, the question of what the consequence is unanswered. In practice, it would default to The Law Is Whatever I Say It Is Because I Am The King And I Am In Charge, which is significantly more volatile. One would have to keep an eye out (har har) for eye stabbers that were unusually friendly with the king, for example.
How does this relate to the culture war? Well, I was thinking about the recent (okay, not really that recent) Supreme Court ruling on Affirmative Action. Every source I have ever read on the topic has talked about the ruling as something that says You Are Not Allowed To Discriminate On The Basis Of Race without any mention of what the consequences are. For example, the New York Times writes
Affirmative action is "unlawful", but what exactly is the penalty if someone discriminates on the basis of race? To draw a parallel to the preschool soccer situation above, one can easily imagine five people with the following suggestions:
All these suggestions are completely consistent with You Are Not Allowed To Discriminate On The Basis Of Race. In practice of course, the law defaults to The Law Is Whatever I Say It Is Because I Command A Byzantine Bureaucracy That Will Somewhat Enforce My Demands So I Am Vaguely In Charge. This is exactly the same kind of unclear situation as the handball and pine tar cases, except the stakes are much higher. If you ask various Experts (TM) what the current law actually is (in terms of trigger/consequence), you will only get speculation. Some say that universities will be able to continue to discriminate on the basis of race as long as it's in a way that isn't exactly the same as the way they had been doing in the past, while others say that the effect is slightly larger. No one knows what the law really is until it gets enforced.
On the other hand, there is also the possibility that we actually do know what the law is. After all, if a law is simply a trigger paired with a consequence, we've already witnessed at least one instance of the trigger (a university discriminating on the basis of race) along with the consequence brought about by that trigger (the universities are told nicely to stop doing whatever they were doing). That is, the law isn't You Are Not Allowed To Discriminate On The Basis Of Race, but rather If You Discriminate On The Basis Of Race, We Tell You To Stop Doing That. (As far as I know, the universities have not been penalized or ordered to compensate their victims in any way – if this is incorrect, I would be open to being corrected.)
If I'm right about this kind of law being bad, what can one reasonably do about this? If someone says "The Supreme Court just made affirmative action illegal", should I respond with "That is a non-central usage of the word 'illegal'"? If saying "AA is illegal now" is bad usage, what would be good usage of "X is illegal"? Certainly, there could be some cases where it is useful, as a code of laws can be made easier to understand if you group multiple triggers with the same consequence (for example, multiple actions in soccer are grouped together as "fouls" and have basically the same consequences). The category of "illegal" could be useful in a similar vein, where we group together various triggers that have the consequence "negative things happen to you". We could then exclude things from the "illegal" category if the consequences are not sufficiently bad, like how we don't consider earning income "illegal" even though it results in losing some amount of money through taxes.
I don't know how to end the post so this is the end of the post.
Punishing racist liberals who act like their ideology is the law is indeed one of the most important ways to restore western republics. Liberals here is a wide range and include woke conservatives like the Theresa May, Torries and others who in practice have been part of this problem.
At minimum people who abuse their post to make a police that goes after not self hating people, or to discriminate for minorities, can in fact be removed from their positions.
Another possibility are large fines.
And why not criminal prosecutions as well.
Generally what needs to be done is simple and doesn't really fit into a bothsidesist narrative that pretends to have intellectual complexity when it is actually intellectually dishonest.
A rule of principle does conflict with the current mainstream liberalism and the ideology that has taken over much of the establishment.
Nevertheless one must also consider organisations. Can you have a non racist society when left wing activist organisations and etnhic supremacist organisations have successfully conspired to have huge power in goverment and in private corporations?
The ADL is quite notorious example in American sense and organizations like hope not hate in places like Britain. I believe making such organizations illegal and declaring them criminal organizations and putting in charge prosecutors with a mind to have them go the way of the mafia, is the way to go.
You must be intolerant to the ideology and ideologues who say that it is ok to discriminate in favor of groups of the progressive stack, to get a society that doesn't do it. So don't tolerate people who promote these ideas in academia, in books, etc. The playbook that has been followed against both the far right and moderation can be used quite successfully against the far left.
As for freedom of speech absolutism, that is completely impossible. A relatively more free society might happen but like in eastern europe after end of communism when they blacklisted the political commissars, you will need to do that. At some point the freedom of the criminal or the political commissar to be an authoritarian tyrant conflicts with the freedom of rest of society.
However things like equality under the law might require a culture that is quite for it. Generally tradeoffs are certain, but you can have a different balance that are worse or quite better. Lets just say the world where Stalin, or Jonathan Greenblat has the maximum freedom is worse than one where regular people are relatively free but figures like these are much less so. Plus freedom of certain individuals isn't everything, there is also to consider how institutions should faction in the way they supposed to.
Academia focusing on promoting the truth and real intellectualism is more important than respecting the freedom of those who want to promote nonsense, and so on. So I believe we need an attitute of enforcing behaviors that are not tolerant to the ideology that what is right is progressive/liberal dogma.
Let me propose an ethical system that is part of the enforcement mechanism and does allow vaccum to dominate. The ethos that it is moral of people promoting their own good, or their group's good while respecting the golden rule and same right to others and trying to not trample over other groups or individuals in pursuing their own betterment.
Enforcing evenhandedness and institutions working in the way they are supposed to will work better than most alternatives I see proposed. Although this also requires a faction of people who support doing this getting power and pushing it through.
Of course, contra some American libertarianish types, part of the rule of law includes international justice which includes the rights of national sovereignity, self determination, genocide being a crime and also purporseful demographic change at expense of a nation also being a crime under international law. In many cases there are pragmatically grey areas, but no people are not interrchangeble, in both attiutes and behavior, nor does the current zeltgeist successfully try to remove ethnic identitarianism of their ingroup against their outgroup. They reinfore it. You see them promote antidentiarianism against natives. So, you can't go full 100% hardcore on nationalism, since that can lead to areas of other groups being mistreated, but respecting the human rights of native peoples are a key aspect to deviating with the current pathological extremes. This means stopping illegal migration and mass migration and recognizing that it had been an infringement on the rights of native people. I have a view focusing more on the old world on this than USA specifically which is somewhat more complicated with its history in my view.
Anyway, the right wing that actually wants to enforce rules evenly and promote things more in line with what I argue here are the people whose ideology is compatible with changing the current injustice into justice. The far leftists in moderate or even fake conservative clothing who play bothsidesist games when they aren't outright hating on the only ones who could change things tend to for the most part side with the agenda that is far left ethnic supremacist against native ethnic groups in western countries. It is fairer to just call it antiwhite in the USA since one could claim blacks there are no more native than white Americans. They are the people to blame for what has happened and the kind of people who need to be kept out of influence on these issues and these far leftists in the centrist clothing are representative of who is to blame for pervasive racist policies of the nature I outlined continuing.
Sometimes facts might appear more muddy because like decades ago Its like trying to convince people who claim to be moderate that Soviet Union sucks and is oppressive while being in a room full of vicious fellow travelers. It won't go well for you, because of the bias and bad nature of the related people. But it doesn't make the facts less straightforward, it is just that straightforwardness and truth is controversial in certain circles that are acting with enough fanaticism, bias or bad faith. And then the struggle sessions start and pressure to apologize. So the problem is not that people aren't charitable enough to the people I condemned but that they have been too willing to excuse their bad behavior and tolerate it. In part because they haven't gatekept them enough out of influence and are allowed to influence the reaction to themselves.
Its like putting the thieves in the position of the judge when deciding the penalty for thievery!
The problem with corruption is that it's society-wide and an emergent phenomenon from economic circumstances (poorer countries are always more corrupt than rich ones are- just comes with the territory). This is why it's happening now- compared to 60 years ago there was no massive uplift out of poverty for most of the West through industrialization, no transformative technologies like radio, TV, thinking machines, telephones, affordable semi-private transportation, and certainly not all of those things at once.
This is why the US (and its provinces to varying degrees) citizenry was at a high watermark of anti-corruption at that time, and why conservatives even have a US that barely had any corruption to remember in the first place. Of course, despite their best attempts, all their anti-corruption laws ended up getting corrupted over time; movements and groups that were once positive-sum expansions of economics and civil rights have all devolved into zero-sum supremacy movements.
As far as eliminating corruption goes, well, that's a hard problem and not one any society has ever managed to solve. It's harder without circumstances that empower the anti-corrupt (we're currently scraping the bottom of the barrel for new technology) and that technology has allowed us to prevent most of the Four Horsemen from paying us a visit (as mostly-indiscriminate death from war/disease/famine tends to, after the fact, increase the individual's power to resist corruption due to increased resource availability, leading to the society becoming less affected by corrupt tendencies in itself- sometimes this needle doesn't move much, like in China during the mass exterminations campaigns of the '50s and '60s, but it does still move).
Calling it by its proper name is generally the best way to start.
Look, I live in a poorer country than USA where you don't see as happened in the USA of over 90% of jobs going to favored by progressives groups after BLM as Bloomberg reported. You don't see this kind of behavior because there are less people with this ideology.
There are also people here who advocate moving more in line of this direction. And they do this because of their ideology. if they capture power they are going to push things more in that line. If people who see it my way are in power, then we will not tolerate progressive supremacists.
It really is tragic that your best hope of moving the needle even a little is mass death other than recognise that groups like the ADL not having a chapter in Microsoft, Google, not having influence in the FBI, is moving the world closer to evenhanded application of the rules by both the goverment and private institutions.
Generally I see here people willing to endorse more extreme ways of thinking over being negative, resentful and bitter of groups in a manner that might see as taking a side in the culture war, while their attitute also by default takes a side. Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the inoccent, but what about not blaming the guilty at all?
I initially had a bigger post talking about the history and how even initially so called civil rights movements had supremacists in charge and in key positions of power. The main difference was that they might have some legitimate grievances too about how some of their favorite groups were treated while after getting their way it is all getting more and more. When the civil rights act was passed Lyndon Johnson was praising Marcuse's as the man whose philosophy reflects it and people like MLK were demanding that USA treats blacks especially better for having treated them in the past especially bad and he and his activists were harassing business to get them to hire larger percentage of blacks and complaining how disparate outcomes were evidence of racism.
But in any case, even if they were more moral in the past which I don't think they were to the extend people think, it doesn't change the current reality.
Progressive supremacists (Jewish supremacists, black supremacists, LGBT supremacists, female supremacists, left wing supremacists that is discriminate in favor of being a leftist) have captured power and are abusing it.
This is only a facet of corruption.
There are others. I fail to see your economic explanation apply to say warmongering in the USA. Where groups like the neocons have captured key positions in American goverment and remain in the key positions as administrations change and are authoritarians who gatekeep and cancel those who aren't neocons. Meanwhile weapon manufacturers have been one of the biggest funders of think tanks. Then there are contractors who make a lot of money in nation building while enriching themselves and local elite collaborators by overcharging and underlivering to the most extreme proportions.
There are plenty of poor communities that behave more morally than richer ones. You might be confusing in some instances the effect of bad behavior to the cause. Behaving in destructive enough manners help perpetuate poverty butt it is possible to be rich and be immoral and even predatory and parasitical.
The people involved with revolving doors in weapon manufacturers, governance, even intelligence services and front groups who promote warmongering are rich and made plenty of money out of this. They are also corrupt. Becoming richer has not made them more moral. Indeed as their method was corruption, it ensures a continuation of it.
Public private partnerships in spheres of medicine with revolving door with big pharma and goverment is also an issue.
Taking very serious agency problems is one way to combat other forms of corruption outside of just the progressive supremacists. Although it is all connected since in addition to intersectionality in ways of other identities, compromise in regards to other agendas and interest of the powerful and willingness to play along is a means for different factions to get their way and promote less conflict in a "bipartisan" uniparty manner.
The dominant ideology and whether institutions tolerate corruption is key. You can have improvement absent mass death, and promoting hopelessness is a cope excuse for being unwilling to name and oppose the corrupt and corruption. Things can always improve and become worse, which relates with whether moral people are willing to behave morally and enforce morality. If they are unwilling and allow immoral people to impose their vision and even strategically demoralize any opposition, well you will see how interesting times can get when people don't try to enforce a better way of doing things.
Of course a certain level of unpleasantness, negativity, bitterness is necessary. Sorry but you can't support being ruled by the reasonable, the ethical, the truthful, the honorable, the restrained, etc, etc, if you aren't unpleasant to the unreasonable, dishonest, unethical and corrupt.
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