of being in your seventies and retired is that you can think through issues
and ask the hard questions that should be asked without fear of intimidation,
economic or otherwise. And because you no longer have an ax to grind, no
one can justifiably claim that your motive is suspect.
Let me now ask one of those questions.
Why is it OK to form an organization called the National Association
of Black Whatever or Women's Whatever or Hispanic Whatever or Gay or Lesbian
Whatever. But it's not OK to form one called the National Association of
White Whatever or Men's Whatever or Anglo Saxon Protestant Whatever or
Heterosexual Whatever?
The only thing I've ever heard or read that's been offered in support
of the patent unfairness of this is that while the members of the first
group are only trying to recover from decades of mistreatment, the members
of the second group have no such problem. So in the interest of fairness,
we have to make allowances for that.
It's an argument that's a perfect example of a fallacy of logic known
as the fallacy of special pleading. Which involves the application of a
double standard: one for the members of a group claiming to be underprivileged,
disadvantaged, whatever, and, therefore, deserving of special consideration,
and another, a much stricter one, for everyone else.
Perhaps the best treatment of this deplorable hypocrisy that I have
ever run across is the chilling last and final Commandment put up on the
wall by one of the pigs in George Orwell's book titled “Animal Farm”: It
said
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS
ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
Think about it. |
