Links to Consider, 3/23
Rob Henderson on status games; Mark Shiffman on victim ideology; Ed West on weak leadership; Dan Williams on democracy and Walter Lippman
Periodic reminder: there is always much more of interest at a link than what I choose to excerpt. I encourage clicking through, especially before commenting.
Victim signaling is strongly correlated with the Dark Triad personality traits of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. The strongest link is with psychopathy (r = .58).
He is discussing the status games that people play. Of course, it is Jason Manning and Bradley Campbell who wrote the book on victimhood culture. When I watched this 8-minute video in which Bari Weiss talks with West Bank Palestinians, what struck me is that they seemed well-dressed, healthy, educated, and articulate—and all of them played the victim card.
The modern language of rights, which from this point forward occupies a foundational place in liberal theories of political order, is ultimately victimological…
Since, however, there is ultimately something undignified about the therapeutic-liberationist whining of the pampered and privileged, they cannot resist making common cause with those struggling violently against political and economic oppression, who are even more admirable if they are throwing off colonialism. Hence the irresistible allure (or pressure) of “allyship” with identity groups asserting themselves, even when they make the privileged liberal nervous. Hence also the appeal of Hamas, which raises to a higher level the self-satisfaction liberationists already take from common cause with disadvantaged racial minorities and analogously “marginalized” groups.
During the great year of protests, 2020, Agnes Callard wrote about the crisis of parenting, noting how ‘When it comes to the question of whose job it is to conform to whom, the sign has gotten reversed. As a teenager coming of age in the 1990s, I watched the tide turn on homosexuality. From my vantage point, a lot of the change seemed to be driven by acceptance parenting: those who couldn’t stomach rejecting their children rejected their own homophobia instead. As acceptance parenting takes hold culturally, we find ourselves speaking more and more about what it takes to be a “good parent” and less and less frequently of the virtues of a “good son/daughter.” The more we expect the parents’ acceptance, the less concerned we are with children’s obedience.’
No one wants to lay down the law, to be the bad guy, and parents take their cues from authorities higher up in the chain of authority.
…liberalism only works so long as there is moral authority at the top. Otherwise, new illiberal forms of moral certainty takes its place. For as Saul Bellow famously observed, when public morality becomes a ghost town, anyone can ride in and declare himself sheriff.
It is a long, interesting essay on a topic that troubles me. Why are young radicals not punished when they misbehave or break laws? What makes authorities in general, and university administrators in particular, so weak?
Finally, Lippmann is right that our naive realism is profoundly harmful. Because we instinctively treat the truth—even about complex political matters—as self-evident, we greatly over-estimate our abilities to shape the world to our desires. Moreover, if the truth is self-evident, there must be something wrong with those who fail to acknowledge the truth. They must be liars, victims of lies, or insane. Even setting aside bias and tribalism, this seems to shape how many people approach political disagreement in ways that generate unnecessary hostility and conflict.
As I was reading the essay, I kept saying to myself “Jeffrey Friedman, Jeffrey Friedman.” Finally, a the end Williams acknowledges the influence of Friedman’s Power Without Knowledge.
Friedman, who died tragically late in 2022 of a heart ailment, asked me not to review his book, because he did not want it to be typecast as a libertarian tract. He wanted its ideas to be examined and accepted by mainstream political scientists. The ideas in his book are indeed powerful and important, although I prefer a simpler style of writing.
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Two small comments about rights (Shiffman’s piece). The smallest one is that Hobbes’ “right of nature” is not a right in the relevant sense here (what is called a claim-right); it is a liberty implying no duty on the part of others. So what Shiffman says about Hobbes seems to be based on a misreading.
Attributing (claim-)rights to people does focus attention on them and what they can claim or demand, namely that others respect their duties or obligation owed TO them. Locke is an important theorist of this sort of view. But the implications for the contemporary scene are not clear. Yes, young whiners are individualistic in important ways, but they seem to point to the “harms” they have suffered as victims, not to the rights others have violated. The shift from rights violations to harming is culturally important. I don’t think I adequately understand the contemporary cult of victimhood, but it does seem to focus on harms more than rights.
Why are young radicals not punished when they misbehave or break laws? What makes authorities in general, and university administrators in particular, so weak?
Indeed!