Steve Sailer writes: Kors and Silverglate are representative of a once powerful tradition of Jewish civil libertarianism that felt that it was good for the Jews that universal rules of freedom of expression applied to everybody. Jazz critic Nat Hentoff, now 89, is another example. (Here’s Hentoff interviewing martyred Jewish comic Lenny Bruce.) A society in which people are not formally punished for being verbally aggressive seemed like it would be good for the Jews.
In recent decades, however, Who? Whom? thinking has become more popular. Why put up with a lot of guff when you have the power and privilege to award yourself plenty of Victimization Pokemon Points? Instead of a Single Standard, why not have a Double Standard? A Single Standard was appealing in Lenny Bruce’s day, but in Jon Stewart’s day, it’s more fun to ruin the career of Rick Sanchez for pointing out that Stewart isn’t a minority victim.
But successful as that has been in the short run, in the long run, will that kind of thinking be good for the Jews? Or will aggressive newcomers, like those University of California student politicians, use the Jewish tendency toward verbal aggressiveness to take down the current top dogs, using the widespread distaste for Israel in the rest of the world as an opening wedge for dislodging American Jews from their positions of power and privilege?
Perhaps the Kors-Silverglate-Hentoff theory of a Single Standard of liberty and objective fairness might be more prudent for Jews in the long run?
COMMENTS:
* The Jews of America are going to be okay. I’m not worried anyone’s going to cramp their style or make them hold their tongues. Nobody puts Baby in the corner.
* The war to eliminate microagressions will work, by design, to the primary benefit of those who complain a lot.
Do Jews complain a lot?
* The key article that started the modern trend of trying to criminalize speech that offends minority groups was by Richard Delgado, a Mexican American law professor (who looks more like he’s Japanese to me). It’s called Words the Wound: A Tort Action for Racial Insults
http://home.wlu.edu/~mayocke/SpeakingFreely/Words%20that%20Wound.pdf
Another especially important is by Charles Lawrence III: If He Hollers Let Him Go: Regulating Racist Speech on Campus
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3115&context=dlj
Delgado responds to his critics in this article:
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1712&context=californialawreview
The two primary critics he responds to are Nat Hentoff and Nadine Strossen. (Others are Marjorie Heins, NYT columnist, Anthony Lewis and Benno C. Schmidt, who despite being a New York City attorney, academic, and venture capitalist with a German last name, is of Texas-German ancestry rather than Jewish ancestry).
The authors Delgado cites as supporting the criminalization of “hate speech” are himself, Rhonda Gay Hartman, Jean C Love, Mari Matsuda, Shawna Yet, and his co-author David Yun.
In summary, your claim that Jews have moved away from their prior strong support for free speech, supposedly because they now want to protect their privileged status from criticism, is not founded. Though they make up a very large percentage of law professors, not a single one of the leading advocates for criminalizing hate speech is Jewish, while at the same time Jews are prominent in opposition, and 80% of those its leading proponent identifies by name.
* Give me a break. Less than two weeks ago, Taki’s published a piece discussing the efforts of Monroe Freedman (then dean of Hofstra Law School) to develop such a law:
And a leading advocate is NYU Professor Jeremy Waldron
And Ezra Levant says that Canada’s hate speech laws were enacted at the request of the Canadian Jewish Congress:
* Steve Sailer: …a lot of the leading supporters of freedom of expression for everybody are Jews old enough to remember Lenny Bruce. You mentioned Nadine Strossen, for example. She’s one of the younger ones at 64.
Like I’ve been saying, perhaps contemporary Jews should listen to the wisdom of their elders. Right now they don’t seem to have much to worry about in terms of Victimism Pokemon Points, but that may not be true forever. For example, I know one of the student politicians involved in the UCLA BDS whoop-tee-doo: it’s a big world out there and things change.
Prudence would suggest that Jews should try harder to hedge their bets, rather than go all in on Diversity Uber Alles.
* Which group has the competence and asabiya to dethrone our Jewish elites?
Blacks? They’ve got anger, unity, charisma, and the whole slavery/segregation thing to guilt trip the rest of us. Unfortunately for them, they lack discipline and competence. Jews have been very effective at using blacks as pawns, while also bringing them under control when necessary (ie pushing out Dinkins after the Crown Heights riots in NYC, getting Al Sharpton marginalized until he agreed to tone down his rhetoric, forcing Obama to bring on lots of Jewish advisers like Rahm/Plouffe/Axelrod to compensate for hanging out with Rev Wright).
Latinos? They’re just as incompetent and undisciplined as blacks, but with none of the energy or charisma or guilt tripping legacy. Also, of the few competent and charismatic Latino leaders in existence (many of whom are Cuban), there’s a tendency to assimilate into the white population and lose their connection with the Latino masses. Linda Chavez and Marco Rubio don’t inspire blue collar Latinos at all, but neither do leftists like Sotomayor or Julian Castro. Anyway lots of these Latino leaders become pawns of Jewish power brokers, as we’ve seen with Rubio, Cruz, and Castro.
Native Americans? Sorry, but I don’t see that happening. They’re mostly involved in small scale stuff, like getting angry about the Washington Redskins and protecting casino gambling. They’re also susceptible to manipulation on the rare occasions when anyone pays attention to them (for some reason, Americans tend to ignore Natives these days). For example, look at how Jack Abramoff played his Native American clients and how much he disdained them (“monkeys,” “troglodytes,” and “morons”).
Middle Easterners (Arabs, Persians, Turks, Maghrebis, etc.)? The ethnic divisions and religious divisions (Shiite, Sunni, Christian) are too significant. It’s also pretty easy for Jewish neoconservatives to whip up anti-ME fury anytime among evangelicals anytime they want. I could see Jewish Democrats getting white liberals (gay, feminists) angry at them too, if the need arose. In the EU, the growth of ME populations has resulted in the rose of right-wing gentile/Jewish coalitions. I’m sure Jews could replicate that here in America. Also, they could play up the mistreatment of blacks under ME rule (ie blacks in Darfur, Afro-Iraqis, Africans in Libya, etc.).
Asians? They tend to be too introverted and politically apathetic to succeed here. There have been plenty of affluent and well educated Asians in California for many decades. How much political clout do they carry? Despite their high level of education and strong representation in elite colleges, how many present Asian leaders do we see in business, finance, politics, intelligentsia/academia, or media?
Indians? There’s plenty of religious and linguistic/ethnic divisions among them. I also don’t see much of a move to separate themselves from the mainstream. There are also quite a few Indians in the UK and Canada, who do adequately well in politics/intelligentsia but aren’t especially dynamic. Also, the Indians who do the best politically (Jindal, Haley-Randhawa) are usually highly conservative Republicans, not reactionaries. In my opinion, Indians are too foreign for most Americans to accept, except when Indians choose to Americanize themselves. There are some prominent Indians in the media too (Sanjay Gupta, D’Souza, Zakaria, Velshi), but they tend to be pretty assimilated and also not that connected with their Indian heritage (all those men have white wives).
-Armenians seem like a group that could do well if they had larger numbers, but there are too few to matter.
-White ethnics do alright in local elections (Italians in NYC/NJ, Poles in Chicago, Irish in Boston), but only the Irish do well nationally.
-Mormons will do well regionally as their numbers grow, but they are not going to be very effective on the national level.
-Christian Middle Easterners could do well too (they’ve flourished in Latin America), but they’re ME ethnic background is too controversial. Pollster John Zogby hasn’t done too well promoting Arab-Amerian interests and seems to have been marginalized in recent years. Also, lots of Christian MEs tend to assimilate in (Doug Flutie, John Sununu, etc.).
