Lawrence Auster has a really interesting post up that I didn't want to let pass without comment. He notes that the supposedly "conservative" party in the UK is talking about setting up set-aside MP positions for women only. For crying out loud.
But we're all used to new absurdities coming out of England every day. One can't even keep up with them. The interesting thing to arise out of this is Auster's speculation:
It appears to be the case that if a society gives equal political rights to women, then over time there will inevitably be an expectation of equal political outcomes for women.
Auster's provocative conclusion, if I understand him correctly, is that women shouldn't be allowed to vote, so that this expectation wouldn't get off the ground in the first place.
Some readers will remember our marathon discussion of this topic here at W4. And those who don't will be able to look at it if I have time to find the link! (This post is being written in some haste. Don't make me live and die by every word in it, please.) [Found the link. If you start with my comment linked above and read down, you'll find most of the debate.]
And while I can't remember everything I said in that marathon thread, I do remember that I wasn't willing to foam at the mouth and denounce the proposition that it might be okay if women had never received the right to vote. It just isn't a mouth-foaming thing for me. For that matter, year after year I find fewer and fewer people I want to vote for anyway, so...
But more seriously, Auster's conjecture obviously has implications for a lot more than just the female franchise. It has obvious implications in the explosive area of race, for example. I imagine that plenty of conservatives, including mainstream conservatives, neo-cons, and all sorts, would be very uncomfortable with the idea of racially set-aside positions in Congress. Yet we all know that, whether it is inevitable or not, the dynamic Auster describes has occurred racially--that is, we have moved from a demand for equality of opportunity to a demand for equality of outcome, racially. Now, what if that movement is "inevitable"? That's a scary thought.
Logically, of course, it isn't inevitable. And from that I take some hope. Say what you like about them (and I imagine my many "dissident con" and various-other-con readers would have plenty to say), America still has lots of conservatives who do object, loudly, to the move from equality of opportunity to equality of outcome. You may excoriate them as meritocrats and individualists (if you happen not to like individualism and meritocracy), you may say that such views aren't really conservative, but I defy you to find any logical necessity for demanding equality of outcome, determined by group bean-counting, if one wants there to be (in some sense) equality of opportunity. You simply cannot get, logically, from, "It's a good idea for women to have the vote," to "Women should make up half of all our politicians." And the same mutatis mutandis for members of any particular group, racial or otherwise.
Well, okay, but is there some sociological law that says that the demand for equality of outcome will follow, as the night the day, the granting of equal political rights to some group?
It seems to me that there has to be an additional set of factors involved for this to happen, a set of factors that was, alas, involved in American politics: If the people who sought equality of political rights in the first place expected equality of outcome eventually so long as the procedures were all fair, if such equality was deeply important to them from the beginning, so important that it was at least as important as, if not more important than, procedural equality, and if they happened to hand on this deep commitment to and faith in equality of outcomes to their ideological successors, then [deep breath]
...it is overwhelmingly likely that, if the equality of outcomes isn't forthcoming, the ideological successors will swiftly ditch the commitment to equality of procedure and demand quotas to guarantee equality of outcome.
Now, if more people who kinda-sorta-like equality of political and procedural rights (like me) were more like me in other respects, we wouldn't have this problem. See, I don't really care much about equality of group outcomes. "Let the chips fall where they may" is something I can say with sincerity. As far as I'm concerned, whether or not, say, short people, women, blacks, whites, or Naphtunkians are math-disadvantaged, not so good at politics, or whatever, is entirely an empirical issue. And we only find out the answer to it by observation in the Great Laboratory of Contingent History. We can't know it a priori. And if it turns out that My People (short, white, right-handed, etc., women) aren't as good as some other group at X, Y, or Z, so what? I mean, really, so what? And if that's true, wouldn't I rather know the truth than have it covered up by the pretense of quotas and set-asides?
Now, suppose everybody thought that way. Then we could have political procedural equality, but nobody would particularly expect, and certainly nobody would demand, equality of outcome. And we wouldn't get crazy bulletins like this from the UK, the EEOC would be shut down, and Utopia would arrive. Well, okay, let's not get carried away. But you get the point.
But, you say, people don't think like that. And, yes, that is the problem. But I've never really understood why they don't. It seems to me that it must result from a notion that justice and injustice lie intrinsically in outcomes, an idea that has been dinned into Americans' heads for several generations now, unfortunately. The most I can say there is that its having become so popular is itself an historically contingent matter, and we can at least hope that the popularity of such a silly idea was in no sense inevitable from the time our great nation was founded.
Comments (16)
Lydia writes:
"It seems to me that there has to be an additional set of factors involved for this to happen, a set of factors that was, alas, involved in American politics: If the people who sought equality of political rights in the first place expected equality of outcome eventually so long as the procedures were all fair, if such equality was deeply important to them from the beginning, so important that it was at least as important as, if not more important than, procedural equality, and if they happened to hand on this deep commitment to and faith in equality of outcomes to their ideological successors, then [deep breath]
"...it is overwhelmingly likely that, if the equality of outcomes isn't forthcoming, the ideological successors will swiftly ditch the commitment to equality of procedure and demand quotas to guarantee equality of outcome."
Lydia has hit the bullseye. This is exactly the case. And it applies in particular to the question of black equality. When liberals in mid 20th century America aimed at racial equality before the law, they weren't just aiming at racial equality before the law, they believed, without explicitly articulating it, that racial equality before the law would lead to racial equality of outcome. And it was when such equality of outcome was not forthcoming, in the early to mid 1960s, that liberalism flipped over to mandating equality of outcome, along with the new racial double standards that such equality of outcome required.
For a fuller development on this, see my articles:
How the 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial group entitlements inevitable
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/003436.html
Guilty Whites [In this article I show the moment in the early to mid '60s, when the fateful "switch" in consciousness occurred.]
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19672
In these articles I argue that the switch to group privileges grew out of attitudes and expectations active in America in the mid 20th century. I am not saying that they were inevitable from the founding of the Republic. However, in my post of today that Lydia is discussing, I am, for the first time, and to my own distress, raising the latter possibility:
"But if I'm wrong,--if it's not possible to contain liberty and equality within strict bounds where they do not ultimate turn into socialism--then the American experiment in government is a failure, its principle are void, and we must start over again on an entirely new basis."
Posted by Lawrence Auster | October 23, 2009 11:06 PM
Here's another piece of mine on the same subject:
How procedural liberalism leads to substantive liberalism
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/000460.html
Posted by Lawrence Auster | October 23, 2009 11:07 PM
Well, it *does* seem to be the case that granting the franchise to a society's women does tend to "feminize" (and not in a positive manner) the society and its institutions. Many of the social problems we conservatives rail against are rooted in the ongoing "feminization/demasculation" of our society.
Posted by Ilíon | October 24, 2009 12:54 AM
We effectively have racially set-aside congressional districts under the Voting Rights Act.
We believe very deeply in racial equality. The alternative is simply Nazism, or so we're endlessly reminded. When reality fails to meet our expectations, the psychological price of acknowledging that reality - namely to see ourselves and be seen by others as Nazis - is too high, so we adopt the view that inequality of outcome proves inequality of procedure. It must, if all groups are really equal. We're not so far gone with respect to sex differences, yet, but there is still a disturbing amount of fudging going on.
Posted by Cyrus | October 24, 2009 12:57 AM
Well, it *does* seem to be the case that granting the franchise to a society's women does tend to "feminize" (and not in a positive manner) the society and its institutions.
There is a way to give women a vote without this result, but it will appear sexist to those who jump to conclusions: give EVERYONE a vote. But make it so that each vote is done together by family, so that all of the family's votes are cast by one spokesman. And make the spokesman chosen by the family. In a culture less feminized than ours has become, this would result in the man, the head of the household, casting a vote for his wife most of the time. But not in all cases, and only by her choice.
Equality of results will easily occur as long as you have equality of opportunity, along with equality of education, and upbringing, and motivation, virtue, and talent. Society ought to seek equality of opportunity to the extent of unnecessary barriers , and can hope (eventually) to achieve equality of education. But there is no way society can ever hope to achieve equality of upbringing and virtue, and as for motivation and talent, these are so clearly outside the realm of governmental authority that it is foolish to speak of it. They are under God's thumb and not ours. So, equality of results can ONLY be achieved by setting aside differences of motivation and talent. Which perforce damages the incentives toward excellence in virtue, and undermines excellence of motivation and talent.
Posted by Tony | October 24, 2009 2:42 PM
The political quota system is very active in selecting delegates for the Democratic party. Multicultural activism itself can be understood as the metastasis of Democratic urban machine politics into all political, business and cultural levels.
There's an easy and perhaps inevitable confusion of equality of political rights and equality of political *power*. What good are equal rights if you are overpowered in the social structure? You'll still lose.
I fear equality of opportunity itself is a radical position that justifies the destructive recreation of society. A wealthy suburbanite kid has greater opportunities than a poor urban or rural lad. Equality of opportunity can only come by raising up the weak and oppressed or by leveling the strong and oppressive.
This is how would-be Libertarian Kerry Holwey gets from mere property rights to thorough cultural radicalism, as if Ed Feser had turned leftward instead of right. (Howley also mentions Feser in the response essays)
Is my comment here just a reiteration of Lawrence Auster's procedural liberalism -> substantive liberalism transformation? Perhaps. Only he doesn't discuss how equality of opportunity can lead to downright communistic policies.
Conservatives are very attached to "equality of opportunity" rhetoric, but they don't see the radicalism latent in the concept.
Posted by Kevin J. Jones | October 24, 2009 2:56 PM
Kevin J. Jones, I welcome the opportunity :-) to clarify my language. By "equality of opportunity" I did not mean what you are talking about when you discuss the differences between a wealthy suburbanite and a poor urbanite. That was why I most often in the post used words like "procedural" and "political." Roughly, these would involve things like being permitted to vote, being allowed to testify in court, not having any formal procedural barrier (such as in some Middle Eastern legal systems) to the equal treatment of one's testimony in court, being permitted to sue, being permitted to own property, to run for political office, and the like. Notice that it was the franchise that Auster was discussing when he discussed political rights.
I think, like you, that it is folly to wish for some sort of "equal starting place" for all mankind, even within a given country. Obviously, as Tony points out, we start out with inequalities of talent. Some people have better parents than others and so forth. There is a certain type of liberalism that positively _resents_ the fact that Joe's parents, though poor, worked hard and sacrificed to get Joe an education while Bob's father was a drunk and his mother a drug addict. They resent it in the sense that they think Joe should feel guilty or should be shackled in some way so as to equalize every start-up benefit between himself and Bob. That is obviously nonsense and is a completely radical and pernicious notion of "equality of opportunity."
I must confess that I am not convinced that there is anything equally pernicious and radical about having equality in some society among adult citizens in the procedural and political areas of the sort I named in the first paragraph.
Nor, to take it a step further in what you might consider a radical direction, do I think there is anything pernicious about interviewing for certain jobs while attempting not to take group membership into account. Notice that I said "certain jobs," because it matters very much what the job is. I think women _should_ be "discriminated against" in the sense that they should not be allowed to be firemen, policemen, or a lot of other things. But if I'm hiring a mathematics professor for a co-ed university, I think that it is fairly admirable and doing the students a good service to try to find the most excellent mathematics professor I can without regard to race or sex. Morals, by the way, _do_ matter IMO when it comes to selecting an excellent mathematics professor. :-) And that kind of "equality of opportunity," too, need not lead to a radical outcome so long as one is truly happy to let the chips fall where they may, so long as one never says, "What's wrong with this department? We don't have any women." Out upon that sort of thinking.
Posted by Lydia | October 24, 2009 3:35 PM
Notice that I said "certain jobs," because it matters very much what the job is. I think women _should_ be "discriminated against" in the sense that they should not be allowed to be firemen, policemen, or a lot of other things.
Yes that's right. Let me give an example of appropriate discrimination. Some years ago there was a small to-do about a play at a university potentially not using enough multicultural cast members, the powers that be insisting on more variety, and (though I cannot recall the details) ended up casting a Vietnamese woman for a role one does not traditionally think of for that physical type. OK, well and good, let the viewer open his mind to non-traditional body types. However, the rhetoric which went along with this was totally over the top on why and how far to push this notion. It was so strong, in some cases, that if the play had been about Martin Luther King Jr., they would have had to be absolutely ready to cast this Vietnamese woman in the lead role. And that, of course, would be pure gibberish, since she could not possibly be to the viewer the visual presence needed for the role. No, if your play is about MLK and racial problems for blacks, you better cast a black person in the lead, no other races need apply. And that would be absolutely correct discrimination.
On the other hand, if what you are doing is casting for suntan lotion commercials, a black person will hardly do. (By the way, black people can sunburn (especially lighter-skinned ones), so that's not the reason why - it is because the visual cues that the commercial needs to make its message won't be visible.)
Kevin J. Jones, are you suggesting that there simply is no meaning to the phrase "equal before the law"? Or is it that such a phrase does not embody a worthy ideal? What about the phrase "God is no respecter of persons."?
Posted by Tony | October 24, 2009 4:47 PM
Lydia, what has you upset? We saw how great group set-asides in political representation has worked out in Lebanon! What could possibly go wrong with the outright politicizing of gender? Surely it couldn't lead to increasing sectarian strife along gender-lines...
Posted by Michael Langhorne | October 25, 2009 4:22 PM
Michael Langhorne--heh. Exactly.
Let me get a little more explosive here than I apparently succeeded in being in the main post: I hereby suggest that the idea that injustice lies in outcomes _began_ to be popular in the United States under the banner of fighting economic injustice, and began getting a footing under that banner well before very many people were fussing about inequality of outcomes on the basis of gender or race. I therefore suggest that if we are going to throw out the idea that a society is inherently unjust because different groups end up less well-off than other groups, we are going to have to consider the possibility that this applies to poverty as well, so that a society is not "unjust" simply in virtue of the fact that it has disparities between rich people and poor people, simply in virtue of the fact that some people have more power than others, and so forth. In fact, we're going to have to reconsider fairly radically ideas of justice and injustice that some people--especially Christians educated in a certain "peace and justice" manner of thought--may have accepted even if they resist applying those ideas to race and gender. After all, let's put this pretty starkly: If you get yourself worried and thinking that your country is unjust because there is a "gap" between the rich and the poor, why shouldn't you get yourself worried and thinking that your country is unjust because there is a similar gap of outcomes between different races or between men and women?
Posted by Lydia | October 25, 2009 4:59 PM
I think it only proper to point out that Laura Wood, over at her site Thinking Housewife, has been exploring this notion of the proper domains of men and women with great perspicacity and sagacity. It's worth a look: http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/. In a recent post (http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2009/10/can-liberty-survive-feminism/#more-3754) prompted by this same entry at VFR, she has argued that the franchise should be extended only to married fathers over the age of 25.
I would add the additional criteria that electors must be property owners, and perhaps also veterans.
Posted by Kristor | October 26, 2009 1:41 AM
John Lott did some interesting research on the impact of female suffrage, and it bears out the argument that female suffrage is an unmitigated disaster for individual liberty.
In addition to your last point there, I would also add that conservatives, social conservatives in particular, tend to have a very romanticized view of women relative to men. It is common to see them tell men to "man up," but when was the last time there were calls for women to submit to their husbands and male authority? When was the last time they even acknowledged that the traditions which they wish to preserve implicitly assume some male authority over women?
I think the criticism that "today's conservatives merely wish to conserve the liberalism of yesterday" is, unfortunately, quite accurate.
Posted by Mike T | October 26, 2009 1:37 PM
Kristor and Mike T, thanks for the links.
Posted by Albert | October 26, 2009 4:03 PM
Tony is correct. Unfortunately, too many believe that equal outcome is a direct and unitary function of equal opportunity, when there are several other intervening factors which government simply cannot control (talent and motivation being the big ones). If everyone had the same opportunity to try out for a given NBA franchise, 5'9" white males would still be under-represented. Should we therefore instill quotas?
Posted by c matt | October 27, 2009 2:39 PM
While that would never fly, perhaps a split system: The hoi polloi elect House of Rep members, and the landed gentry elect Senators. That way, each can remain a check on the other, and, with a little luck, the government may never do anything.
Posted by c matt | October 27, 2009 2:44 PM
Mike T that hasn't been my experience at all. The few traditional conservatives that I have met believe humanity (men and women) to be sinful. I think you're talking about neoconservatives or other ''conservatives'' who have basic liberal roots or have been infected with liberalism. Either that or you're applying liberal views of how traditional conservatism is (kind of like the non-Islamic theories of Islamic extremism).
Posted by Jessica | January 1, 2011 5:03 AM