Can’t fight group think
Bookworm on Jan 16 2009 at 12:08 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
Several years ago, I read one of Natan Sharansky’s books in which he described his life as a refusenik in the former Soviet Union. One of the points he made that struck me with incredible force was the way in which citizens in totalitarian regimes develop an internal life entirely separate from the external forces against them. For example, Soviet citizens were forced in public to accept that their economy was a miracle of Communist exceptionalism, even as their logical brains figured out that this propaganda bore no relationship to the truth. Their brains developed a binary quality, processing the “real” truth and the “state” truth, creating an exceptional level of intellectual and emotional stress.
I was rather brutally reminded of that yesterday, when my husband and I had the opportunity to listen to our children speak to third parties about the upcoming inauguration. Both of them, using almost precisely the same words, stated that they were very excited about the inauguration because Obama is the first African-American president, which makes him special.
Later, Mr. Bookworm said to the kids that it sounded a bit funny to him them saying the same thing, and asked if they really meant that. Both assured him that they did not. That is, they didn’t bear any hostility to Obama because of his race. They simply didn’t care. However, both earnestly explained that, if they didn’t say this rote line about Obama’s historica importance, they would be ostracized: “We have to say that if we want to hang with people.” Mr. Bookworm was shocked. He shouldn’t be, though. It is he who constantly reminds me not to tell anyone about my political views for fear of subjecting us to obliquy and ostracism.
As for the pressures the kids feel in the school environments, you might find this interesting.
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“the way in which citizens in totalitarian regimes develop an internal life entirely separate from the external forces against them”…Sebastian Haffner described the same process in Nazi Germany, in his book Defying Hitler. I’ll post an excerpt or two if I can find my copy.
They simply didn’t care. However, both earnestly explained that, if they didn’t say this rote line about Obama’s historica importance, they would be ostracized: “We have to say that if we want to hang with people.”
You should teach them infiltration, sabotage, psychological manipulation, and hand to hand tactics, Book. Get them while they are young.
When they hit puberty and the teenage rebellion craze starts ongoing, Book, I trust you will want them to rebel, not against you, but against the “system”. Which will be their current social climate and New EngSoc rules.
If they don’t rebel against their peers or societal status quo groups, then they will focus their angst on you. Without a fundamentally strong self-confidence level, so that one can take peer pressure and make it completely irrelevant because 1. they can’t do anything physically to you because you’d annihilate them, 2. because you are confident in your own abilities and strength not to need the approbation of your peers, and 3. finally because you understand that people who are under the sway of the Group Mind are individually weak in spirit, mind, or body. They each can be annihilated individually, which is why they band together in order to force their way of doing things unto everybody else. That is their weakness and through exploiting this weakness, no group mind can effectively ostracize any individual. For the group always depends upon a hierarchy. Eliminate the leaders and the rest of the group is leaderless and powerless.
It is he who constantly reminder me
I believe that should be “reminds me”.
I came across these videos about bullying on youtube when I was surfing for fights to watch and analyze.
Link
New Eng Soc, Book, is perfect for bullies wanting to use intimidation on vulnerable members.
For example, Soviet citizens were forced in public to accept that their economy was a miracle of Communist exceptionalism, even as their logical brains figured out that this propaganda bore no relationship to the truth. Their brains developed a binary quality, processing the “real” truth and the “state” truth, creating an exceptional level of intellectual and emotional stress.
I believe you can call that splitting, something that goes on in schizophrenics or those reacting to traumatic events.
In New EngSoc, of course, we have doublethink. The ability to believe two or more mutually exclusive things at the same time, without accepting that they are mutually contradictory.
The fact that the Soviets failed to control the thoughts of their people is a sign that the Soviet Union was never True Communist to begin with. You know what that means, Book. It means that when we try things again, like say here in America, we will get it right this time.
The stress created in trying to believe in two mutually exclusive things is what Shrink calls “cognitive dissonance”. The more intelligent you are, the less cognitive dissonance you have, because your doublethink ability is so far above the average person’s. The higher your doublethink ability, the more beliefs you can hold in your head at any one time that are also mutually exclusive. This means that you can endlessly create justifications and rationalizations for why two different beliefs aren’t really mutually exclusive.
The dumb person or just the average person can only hold a few beliefs that are mutually exclusive, in their minds at any one time. This means that if they ever started thinking about the stuff they say, cognitive dissonance will result because they just aren’t smart enough to endlessly produce rationalizations and justifications, like say, George Soros or the leaders of Planned Parenthood and Code Pink.
This creates a robotic mindlessness in the 68 percentile of New EngSoc followers, leaving 13% to be the true core leaders. Those are the smart ones, Book. The ones that can actually think and plan and strategize when they are weighed down by so many conflicting theories and beliefs. The cannon fodder at the bottom simply obeys their orders from the top, because it is easier than dealing with the pain of cognitive dissonance. The ones at the top, the leaders of the Democrat party, have no cognitive dissonance, Book. They feel no guilt, no pain, no hesitation, and no doubt from holding thousands of mutually exclusive beliefs in their head.
When things came to a head and sexism was set up against racism, the leaders at the top, the delegates, had already decided which was the more important: meaning, which was the more painful if de-prioritized.
Pumas, however, didn’t quite go along. And therein lies the weakness of groupthink. It has to annihilate all competition, for it is not strong enough to stand on its own merits, for it has no merits.
Thanks for both the proofreading and the excellent comments, Y.
While many Democrats tout themselves and their leaders as “smart” and “intelligent”, many conservatives do not agree. In reality, I believe that this is not due to Democrats being wrong or Republicans being wrong, since I believe both are right.
The Democrats are right when they say their leaders are smart and conservatives are also right when they say Democrat leadership is dumb and stupid, even if we assume that they are out for nothing but their own self-interests. Even in terms of greed, they are stupid.
And I believe a simple explanation for this is that when you have to hold hundreds of mutually exclusive beliefs in your head at once, when you have to juggle the different priorities of sexism, gay rights, racism, and all the other hierarchy of “identity group politics”, you won’t have much intellectual vigor left over for real problems and issues.
It is the pride of the Democrats that their leaders are so smart that they have not yet gone catatonic from juggling the various mutually conflicting issues of the Left and the Progressive Regressives. Conservatives simply realize that you don’t need to be as smart or educated as John Kerry, to be, in reality, smarter than he is. John Kerry has to spend a major proportion of his thinking in sewage while we can spend it on enlightenment. This means it doesn’t matter how smart Kerry is or how well educated he thinks of himself. In reality, the soldiers that go to school and serve in the military are effectually more capable of dealing with real life problems, because they, at least, don’t have to deal with the mental hoops through which Kerry has to jump everyday he goes wind surfing.
I’ve noticed that when it comes to these Leftist group hierarchies, that there will always be one or two leaders that are the spokesmen and then there are the followers that don’t truly have all the witty comebacks, but they look towards the leaders to guide them.
This is the same dynamic you will find in High School cliques. Same dynamic in the work place. Same dynamic in the military. It is human nature.
And just as it is true in war that if you decapitate the leaders, that their side’s Command and Control functions will degrade and so will their cohesion, the same is true for political infighting, office politics, or High/Middle/Low School social affairs.
The psychology is ridiculously simple. The followers of any clique will be able to pick up on the “expected behavior” memo from body language. If the group ostracizes one single individual, then the fear of being shunned themselves will make all the group follow the same mission. They don’t want to be shunned themselves, after all. But this is usually not instigated miraculously, but by feat by one member of the group. A senior member, if you will, someone who has clout or has close connections with someone who does have clout.
To the single individual, it looks like the entire group is in lock step and cohesion against him. But in reality, a lot of those people in the group may sympathesize with the ostracized member, but they don’t have enough of a spine to do anything about it.
This group dynamic is broken in the same way insurgencies or occupations are. Destroy the authority of the leaders in the group, convince the people of that group at the bottom that you will be able to provide them protection and social benefits, and the group may eventually turn on their own leaders and follow you.
The authority of a group leader rests upon the sheep’s confidence that that leader knows what he is doing and can command the loyalty and obedience of the rest of the group. A single member of that group won’t buck the trend, at least not by himself, so long as he knows that the others will follow the leader. Of course, everybody else is probably thinking the same thing, waiting for one of them to make their move and then join in. But this is like Mumbai, with every police officer waiting for each other to shoot first, but nobody is doing it, at least not on their side.
So, in comes the ostracized member who has already lost social position and influence in the group, so he has nothing to lose. If he can embarass the leader of the group, render their authority questionable, and successfully incite confusion or dissent amongst the group members, then the authority of the leader will erode and the group will start considering other avenues.
The insurgency is the outsider trying to destroy the status quo and the occupier is the one that seeks to maintain the status quo as it exists right now.
Al Qaeda vs America, Al Qaeda vs Sunnis, Sunnis vs Maliki, Sadr vs Maliki, Sadr vs America, troublemakers in the military vs the lawful chain of command, mutineers vs the captain, assassins vs sitting US Presidents, all of them follow the same fundamental guidelines. And all of them are insurgencies (first) vs occupations (second).
Al Qaeda the insurgency was going up against Sunnis as the occupation when AQ had pushed back America enough that the Sunnis were the only ones left in charge. Since AQ knew nothing except blow up the “occupier” this meant that their targets were now the Sunnis, cause the Americans are no longer in range. ONce the Sunnis were no longer insurgents, but now people attempting to build something and maintain a status quo, they found their interests to be more agreeable with the Americans than with terrorists. So insurgencies can indeed become the occupation themselves. Just like Khomeini and Castro, after their respective revolutions.
The world goes round and round, and so does human history.
Thanks for both the proofreading and the excellent comments, Y.
You are dearly welcome, Book. I have read so much over the years that “proofreading” now comes automatically.
Given that I learned spelling from reading more than writing, that also means that when weird words come along, I automatically notice them as flagged as either incorrect, new, or something weird that I must remember for later.
Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra): Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
From The Manchurian Candidate, 1962.
Book:
It’s interesting that you bring up Mr. Bookworm’s askance reaction to your kids repeating the same mantra about Obama. It could be a teachable moment.
Recently my ultra-leftist shrink friend, the one I go out and smoke cigars with a few times a year, told me that “the schools sure have done a thorough job with my kids–they’re all over me for smoking cigars.”
Mind you, this is a guy who smokes maybe six cigars a year, most of them in my presence.
I told him, “Yes, it is kind of sad that while the schools teach the evils of tobacco, they do not teach logic or proportionality. You know, as in saying truthfully that puffing six cigars a year will do absolutely no harm to you. Zilch. It’s almost like they’re brainwashing them.”
He actually chomped on that thought for a few moments before discarding it. After all, our schools in Marin are very progressive, therefore all of the ideas they impart are Necessary and Good.
Still, as Ymarsakar says, you don’t have to always land a heavy blow in an obvious place to begin weakening an opponent.
Here are my personal recommendations for fighting the various social pressures inherent in a society dominated by weaklings and pathetic parasites.
1. Learn how to dismantle your fellow human beings with these attendant benefits: You will never be goaded or threatened or pressured into doing something don’t want to do because you “fear” the physical threat from the group; you will find it hard to judge yourself as inferior or outnumbered when you know you are the predator amongst the sheep; your opponents will find it ridiculously hard to make you out to ostracized when you can stand up for yourself and when everyone knows you can annihilate the opposition if you wanted to (which will be apparent if they seek to ever try physical intimidation on you in order to “bulk” up their street cred amongst the credulous).
2. Learn the psychological weaknesses of your opponents and then exploit them. Everyone has fears and weaknesses and Sun Tzu did advocate knowing yourself and your weaknesses in order to better exploit the weaknesses of others. Unless you can see your own problems and how your attackers exploited them, and then switch places, you will always be the victim and the prey.
3. Learn to game the system, but on your own rules, not the rules and priorities of those who wish to make you their slaves. You can play their little games and hide under the radar, but it must always be on your terms, for it is your life and not theirs.
I was once of the fake liberal ideology faction, so I tend to know what goes on in the heads of these kinds of people when it comes to things like Israel vs Palestine. You see, because they don’t know how to handle violence or how to defeat evil, they have this ever present fear of escalation. They don’t want to escalate the fight because they doubt their ability to win in the end. So what do they do to take care of this little emotion? Why, they project it and blame it on others, that’s what.
So these Progressive Regressives call for “international law”, “ceasefires”, “proportionate response”, and the various other propaganda lines we hear and see all day long.
But do you know why these people are so motivated to defend Palestine and Israel? It is because they fear. They fear being up against a superior foe that they cannot fight or make back off with “social” tools. They see themselves as the Palestinians. As the underdogs. And if they, helpless as they are, become just… then wouldn’t the helpless Progressive Regressives and fake liberals also, necessarily, become justified as well? And if they are justified, if they are on the side of justice, then their fear would be rational, no? Fear of evil, fear of criminals, fear of Israeli war crimes… that is just, no? It’s not because they are cowards or pathetic weaklings, oh no, it is because they are the underdogs and they have right on their side.
This is a fanciful delusion, of course, because no matter what you say to others, you can’t hide from yourself. At least not without making yourself schizoid. You can’t hide from your own doubts, your own fears, your own low opinion of your competence in fighting and killing. You know, better than almost anyone else, how you would likely fair against serial killers and cannibalistic freaks. We are not children, we have had plenty of time to see the real consequences of failure in this respect. We are either confident or we lack confidence, we are either prepared or not prepared. And if we lack confidence in our own ability to defend our lives, then this necessarily means, due to the power of self-preservation among human instincts, that our brains will find a way to protect us from our own incompetence and our own fears. And that way can take some very creative paths.
One path is called pacifism. Violence is not ethically right, so you are doing God’s work or whatever by not fighting evil and just letting it kill you and then you’ll go to heaven. Another path is called “international law”, where the “international community” will save you, rather than God or morality. Another path is called jihadism, in which dying simply means you go to heaven and your just rewards, so your fear of death becomes unimportant.
There are countless ways the human brain solves these problems of self-preservation. Some are even rational and feasible as well. Most, however, are not. There’s a reason why people tend to panic and go into mass hysteria when death/disaster stands in their face.
It makes sense, does it not. When a fake liberal needs to protect himself, what does he do? He calls on the government. When a fake liberal transfers his identity to the Palestinians and sees the Palestinian “underdogs” as being the same as the fake liberal him or herself, then the actions of the “underdogs” to protect themselves against overwhelming firepower is just the kind of thing the fake liberal himself would wish to do. If the fake liberal knew how, that is. And if the fake liberal could muster enough courage to attempt it. But, that’s what the Palestinians are for. As a useful fantasy in order to make all these issues of self-doubt disappear for the fake liberal, the Democrats, and the various other useful idiots of Hamas. And the fake liberal gets to call upon the “international community” (Big Brother) to solve things for him. Let’s not forget that.
This is not a position of strength. Nor is it a position of justice, good government, morality, or anything of the kind. It is a position born of fear, it is something people have decided to do because they have taken counsel of their personal fears and see a way to absolve themselves of their guilt, responsibility, and self-doubt by cheering on the Palestinians. By aligning their identity with the Palestinians, so that anything bad we say about the Palestinians is taken as a direct attack on the fake liberal’s sense of self.
The methods to fight this are obvious. Don’t allow people to ignore their own problems by pretending that they are defending the Palestinians. They don’t give a damn about the Palestinians or civilian casualties, on either side. Take the debate to its origin, the true origin. The origin of their fears, the origin of their doubts, and the origin of their personal motivations. That is the only thing that has ever mattered in psychology. And it will be the only thing that can shatter the group mind’s borg like collective.
If you attack the Palestinians or support the Israelis, you are attacking the group mind as a whole and thus the group mind can pool their support and say “the Palestinians (like us) are justified and the Israelis broke their cease fire first”. This is why they consistently take the positions that they do and this is why Hamas consistently manipulates the international crowd the way they do. It works because it is consistent.
But, the group mind is first and foremost made out of individuals. Find those individuals, find out what they fear and what motivates them, and you can cleave them from the group mind. After that, they won’t be able to hide from their own personal problems by transferring their emotions to the Palestinians or anybody else. Oh, they’ll keep on trying, but our inner demons are far more ferocious than any simple headline in the newspaper. Once you have toughened up the fallen group member and made him responsible for his own defense, so that he can remove his fears and his doubts utilizing his own skills, you have essentially removed much of the root cause for the support of the Palestinian terrorist front.
If this sounds like psychoanalysis, don’t be surprised. But it is not therapy, it is war. There’s a difference.
P.S.
One of the things mentioned by one of the TFT instructors concerns the fact that most socialized and healthy civilians (sheep) in America naturally see things in a violent situation from the victim’s point of view. They associate and transfer a lot of their own emotions to the victim, because they naturally would see themselves as a victim in such a situation. They believe that they are the ones that are going to be shot, stabbed, or beaten to death in a violent confrontation. They believe so because they believe they have more in common with the victim than they do with the aggressor. And this is the same thing that motivates a lot of the pro-Palestinian support here in America.
But, what’s important to remember here is that you don’t want to see yourself as the victim. Seeing yourself as the victim, looking at it from the victim’s view, is ultimately going to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy. No, you want to see it from the predator’s viewpoint. From the killer’s viewpoint. You need to analyze which of his methods worked, how they worked, why they worked, and if you could figure out a way for the killer to have killed more people and in less time.
Because it is only then that you will win and know it as well. Do you understand why many Marines and Army convoy peeps prefer to “think of how they would attack this convoy if they were the insurgents” instead of thinking “I’m waiting here to be attacked, don’t know when, don’t know how, and I have to just wait until then”? The second leads to your death or your mental fatigue, which leads to mistakes, which leads to death and the second leads to victory and combat effectiveness. The same reason applies. And it is one fundamental reason why the military does not train its people to think of itself as civilians or targets or victims or any kind of prey. At least, the infantry branches do. Attitude matters, for it allows you to consider options you never would have had you only saw yourself as the victim of an attack.
But in reality, free of human subjectivity, the only thing that matters is injury. The successful attack and annihilation of enemies and targets. Attitude is only one means by which this can be accomplished, and it normally requires many other elements. Like training. Like opportunity. Maybe even some luck or at least, a lack of bad luck.
The Left, the Democrats, they cannot think of themselves as the aggressors or the attackers. No, they are always “defending” themselves against Israeli aggression, or American Imperialism, or Republican “dirty tricks”. Anything they do, anything whatsoever, is justified because it will always be “self-defense”.
But for the individual, that ain’t going to work. Why? Because injury matters in violent confrontations far more than it does in political matters. That is why we have politics and not perpetual war here in the states. Democrats never understand that little facet. They, after all, said that there would be a Civil War here in America if Obama lost. With what guns are they are going to fight this Civil War with, I wonder? Injury does not care about which side has the higher “group identity” you know.
But do you know why these people are so motivated to defend Palestine and Israel?
Correction, that should be against Israel, not and Israel.
“the schools sure have done a thorough job with my kids–they’re all over me for smoking cigars.”
I believe he still thinks that, no matter the personal inconvenience, the schools did do a good and “thorough” job on the kids. He knows what they are being taught, I presume, and he doesn’t mind and perhaps even approves. He may not approve of the personal inconvenience, but when has personal inconvenience ever stopped a proponent of Democrat policies?
It ain’t till people suffer that things get beyond “personal inconvenience”.
OK…found the Sebastian Haffner book. He was born in Germany circa 1907, and his book mainly covers his experiences during Weimar and the early Nazi era. Realize now I quoted part of this here before, but I think it bears repeating.
“With fearful menace the state demands that the individual give up his friends, abandon his lovers, renounce his beliefs and assume new, prescribed ones. He must use a new form of greeting, eat and drink in ways he does not fancy, employ his leisure in occupations he abhors, make himself available for activities he despises, and deny his past and his individuality. For all this, he must constantly express extreme enthusiasm and gratitude.
The individual is opposed to all of that, but he is ill-prepared for the onslaught. He was not born a hero, still less a martyr. He is just an ordinary man, with many weaknesses, having grown up in vulnerable times.”
Greetings:
Back in 1973, I was working for Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory as a Satellite Navigator on its Research Vessel Vema. As part of President Nixon’s detante with the USSR, we were working with oceanographers from Murmansk, off the coasts of Iceland, showing them how to use the equipment they were going to receive. After the project, we sailed to Murmansk for some R&R and shore work.
Among the amenities, the Commies provided while we were ashore, was an old school bus to squire us about the town. One day, they wanted to show us the monument that had been erected to honor the sailors and merchant mariners who had been lost during World War II. To get to the monument, we had to drive past the harbor area where there were a large number of large billboards showing what appeared to be some kind of statistics about their fishing fleet. One of our crew members asked our guide, a Russian oceanographer, what they were all about.
“Propaganda,” he replied.
I guess I will be alone then, come Tuesday. I work at a university which, while not in the same category as Berkley is still filled with worship of The One. I don’t dare say that I am afraid for the future, so I just say I wish him well – which I do.
In the meantime, I redouble my prayers.
You probably won’t have to worry until they ask you to put on an armband, Ellen.
My attitude is one of quiet resignation and a personal scramble to figure out how I plan to survive this mess. I once asked a Nicaraguan refugee how the Nicaraguan people could “elect” the communists back into power after what they had been through. His response: people quickly forget. There is nothing that you and I can do to change peoples’ perceptions…yet – only circumstances can do that.
We’ve passed from an Age of Reason to an Age of Emotion. A good part of it is the failure in the education system (you can’t argue “facts” with people who can’t reason), but a good part (I believe) is that people have managed to succeed very well in recent economic times without having to think. As Marshall McLuhan aptly prophesied, the medium became the message and people became free to turn their brains off without (they believed) the fear of consequences (just consider what the MSM media provides as daily fare). People could also turn off their character without fear of consequences. Just look at the type of people our august citizenry vote into power – the circus we refer to as the Senate as Exhibit #1.
Well, the next few years should provide quite a plethora of consequences for people to contemplate. Maybe it will jolt them from their video-inspired alternate universes and get them to start thinking again instead of emoting. Until then, our bleats will echo with Cassandrian futility. Don’t waste your time or breath…think ahead, plan and check your six. Time and circumstances have a way of changing things. We want to be ready.
Danny #15
>> We’ve passed from an Age of Reason to an Age of Emotion. [...]
Well, the next few years should provide quite a plethora of consequences for people to contemplate. Maybe it will jolt them from their video-inspired alternate universes and get them to start thinking again instead of emoting. Until then, our bleats will echo with Cassandrian futility. Don’t waste your time or breath…think ahead, plan and check your six. Time and circumstances have a way of changing things. We want to be ready. >>
A People become soft when times are very good for a long time. I’d say we’ve had two generations of good times since the recovery began in 1982. (The recovery from the disastrous Carter policies…) 9-11 wasn’t a good time, and it woke SOME of us up, but not very many.
I think we are in for a struggle over the next decade, and quite a few more people are going to face hard times. All these surface opinions and bleatings about irrelevant things will recede as hard choices have to be made. We’re already seeing some of this with Iran, Syria, and Hamas. As Iran edges ever closer to completing their nuclear annihilation program, more and more people are examining it and becoming VERY worried. Hard times have a way of making people realize that there are consequences for silly, Jimmy Carter-like decisions and his eccentric-at-best, evil-at-worst manner of coddling dictators, coddling terrorists, his utterly bizzare filter on his world-view.
“Real” truth and the “state” truth…
Bookworm, Can’t fight group think: Several years ago, I read one of Natan Sharansky’s books in which he described his life as a refusenik in the former Soviet Union. One of the points he made that struck me with……
The schools have become the facilitators and supporters of bullies.
Kors states that at an academic conference sponsored by the University of Nebraska, the attendees articulated the view that “White students desperately need formal ‘training’ in racial and cultural awareness. The moral goal of such training should override white notions of privacy and individualism.” One of the leading “diversity experts” providing scores of “training programs” in universities, corporations, and government bureaucracies is Hugh Vasquez of the Todos Institute of Oakland, California. Vasquez’s study guide for a Ford Foundation-funded diversity film, Skin Deep, explains the meaning of “white privilege” and “internalized oppression” for the trainees. It also explains the concept of an “ally,” as an individual from the “dominant group” who rejects his “unmerited privilege” and becomes an advocate for the position of the subordinate groups. This concept of the “ally,” of course, is Gramscian to the core; it is exactly representative of the notion that subordinate groups struggling for power must try to “conquer ideologically” the traditional intellectuals or activist cadres normally associated with the dominant group.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3484376.html
Helen would naturally be an Ally, then. Someone that has been “converted” to the new realm.
A provision of the Violence Against Women Act, for example, that permitted women to sue their attackers in federal rather than state courts was overturned by a deeply divided Supreme Court 5-4. The majority argued on federalist grounds that states had primacy in this criminal justice area. In another 5-4 decision the Supreme Court in 1999 ruled that local schools are subject to sexual discrimination suits under Title IX if their administrators fail to stop sexual harassment among schoolchildren. The case, Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, involved two 10-year olds in the fifth grade. Justice Anthony Kennedy broke tradition by reading a stinging dissent from the bench. He was joined by Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. Justice Kennedy attacked the majority view that the actions by the 10 year-old boy constituted “gender discrimination.”
American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers in The War Against Boys noted that the court majority appears to accept the position of gender feminist groups that sexual harassment is “a kind of hate crime used by men to maintain and enforce the inferior status of women.” Thus, Sommers explains, in terms of feminist theory (implicitly accepted by the court), the 10-year-old boy “did not merely upset and frighten” the ten-year old girl, “he demeaned her as a member of a socially subordinate group.” In effect, the court majority in Davis endorsed Gramscian and Hegelian-Marxist assumptions of power relations between dominant and subordinate groups and applied those assumptions to American fifth graders.
Recently, a similarly divided Supreme Court has offered divergent rulings on homosexual rights. In June 2000 the court overturned the New Jersey State Supreme Court and ruled 5-4 in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale that the Boy Scouts did not have to employ an openly gay scoutmaster. The majority’s reasoning was quintessentially Tocquevillian — the First Amendment right of “freedom of association.” Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Rehnquist declared that “judicial disapproval” of a private organization’s values “does not justify the State’s effort to compel the organization to accept members where such acceptance” would change the organization’s message. The law, Rehnquist continued, “is not free to interfere with speech for no better reason than promoting an approved message or discouraging a disfavored one, however enlightened either purpose may strike the government.”
In 1994, for example, three residents of Berkeley, Calif., protested a federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plan to build subsidized housing for the homeless and mentally ill in their neighborhood. The residents wrote protest letters and organized their neighbors. HUD officials investigated the Berkeley residents for “discrimination” against the disabled and threatened them with $100,000 in fines. The government offered to drop their investigation (and the fines) if the neighborhood residents promised to stop speaking against the federal housing project.
Heather Mac Donald reported in the Wall Street Journal that one lawyer supporting HUD’s position argued that if the Berkeley residents’ protest letters resulted in the “denial of housing to a protected class of people, it ceases to be protected speech and becomes proscribed conduct.” This is classic Hegelian-Marxist thinking — actions (including free speech) that “objectively” harm people in a subordinate class are unjust (and should be outlawed). Eventually, hud withdrew its investigation. Nevertheless, the Berkeley residents brought suit against the HUD officials and won.
It is not just the kids, Book.