Unto Others
Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading of course, this strikes me as broadly accurate:
That’s how you get liberals saying stuff like, “oh I’m sure you’d be jumping straight to execution if this were a white guy“ and then every single time a white guy commits a heinous crime the entire right in unison chants, “execute him.”
Or, to take another example, consider the way in which liberals always think that conservatives want and expect immigrants to behave in a certain way just simply because they hate immigrants, when the conservative is merely applying the same standard to which they would hold themselves in a foreign country.
In these cases and many others, liberals are confused by a straightforward and universal conception of justice.
Much of the content here that’s about crime, antisocial behaviour and recreational malice is informed by a fairly visceral dislike of expectations of exemption and immunity – and actual immunity – from normal moral consequences. Consequences that I would expect to befall me, were I sufficiently selfish and unpleasant to engage in similar behaviour.
Likewise, were I to move to a distant country, hoping to flourish, it would not occur to me to behave as these vibrant newcomers do. Or in ways seen quite vividly here. Were I to repeatedly violate the values and decencies of the indigenous, as if I owed nothing to those on whom I impose – as if their values, their expectations of reciprocation, were contemptible – then I would very much expect my welcome to be withdrawn.
And quite promptly.
Update, via the comments:
Rafi adds, drily,
Indeed. The convolutions of which, we’ve poked at before.
While Chow Bag quips,
Well, yes. There does seem to be a lot of frantic, rather neurotic calculation as to whether normal rules should apply, depending on the pigmentation or cross-dressing tendencies of the perpetrator, to whom indulgence must be extended. If you squint and pretend. If you perform the necessary contortions.
And so, we arrive at scenes like this, or these, in which malevolent bedlamites, beings clearly driven by spite, expect to be spared normal consequences, to which the rest of us would be subject, and merrily exploit their assumptions of immunity. Behaving in ways that, for anyone else, would likely result in a good kicking.
Needless to say, this is not a recipe for a fragrant tomorrow.
But, but IDENTITY EXEMPTIONS!
Progressive ’empathy’…
Well, yes. There does seem to be a lot of frantic, rather neurotic calculation as to whether normal rules should apply, depending on the pigmentation or cross-dressing tendencies of the perpetrator, to whom indulgence must be extended. If you squint and pretend. If you perform the necessary contortions.
And so, we arrive at scenes like this, or these, in which malevolent bedlamites, beings clearly driven by spite, expect to be spared normal consequences, to which the rest of us would be subject, and merrily exploit their assumptions of immunity. Behaving in ways that, for anyone else, would likely result in a good kicking.
Needless to say, this is not a recipe for a fragrant tomorrow.
[ Post updated. ]
[ Schedules tomorrow’s Ephemera before Stephanie starts throwing things. ]