Dear Friends,
It seems to me, when you change a longstanding rule to accommodate a certain faction, a rule you wouldn’t and haven’t for any other, be it religious, political or racial, you have set that faction up as superior to the others. By doing so you have avowed that unequal is the new standard, and as such, have abandoned the Enlightenment… for the good and bad. The good is only for those who seize arbitrary rule and obviously bad for everyone else. Those that seek arbitrary rule however, should beware, if another faction seizes that arbitrary rule for themselves, your faction is out of luck. So, to say it is good policy to change a longstanding rule to cater to a faction, thus saying unequal is now the norm, is antithetical to the Enlightenment.. as is all post modernist thought.
Changing a longstanding rule to accommodate a faction, is saying that faction is more important than the factions that the government wouldn’t do that for, to the faction(s) that run the government. Which is essentially legislating the superiority of that faction to the rest of society. When any faction is legislated as superior, the laws don’t apply to them like everyone else, that is what the ancient Greeks called arbitrary rule. The rules apply arbitrarily, depending on who the offender is, who the victim is, and their standing, (their political favor), in society. We all know that political favor plays a large part in litigation and criminal law, but to legislate that a faction is superior to the rest, is to openly affirm, unequal as the new standard.
Once a society has openly accepted unequal as the standard, even in a small way, the slide to outright oppression is rapid. People may not consciously know we are unequal, but on a subconscious level, we all do. This knowledge makes us act differently. Nietzsche called it the Master Slave Morality. As we adopt the slave mindset, we also accept greater impositions on our liberties and freedom, until all we are allowed to do is debauch ourselves at the suffrage of the State. The State only too happy to murder any resulting baby, at any request, and replace the dead babies with the favored factions. Moreover, by accepting unequal as the standard, we are also insulting the Enlightenment, and by turning away from the Enlightenment, humanity will soon discover famine, cold and want.
The singular philosophical advance of the human race, was the Enlightenment, and could only have happened under Christianity. The Enlightenment advances were based on the concepts of the Golden Rule, the Good Samaritan, love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek, which underpinned the Enlightenment ideas of, equality under law, discourse rather than appeal to authority and the scientific method. These philosophical advances have allowed us to feed eight billion people better than we could one billion, with fewer starving, less disease and the possibility of a better life. To repudiate the philosophy that led to such conditions means, necessarily, a return to a place where the entire economy of the world cannot feed a billion people, let alone eight billion!
Mass famine, oppression, wars over food, chaos and crime, while the elite live like biblical kings… what is not to like about discarding the advances of the Enlightenment, for progressive dreams of a post patriarchal hegemonic utopia? When inequality is legislated, then it becomes a danger to all the other Enlightenment values. When a single faction is allowed to break the rules, and even demands it not be offended writ in legislation, the government that bends, is openly avowing that faction as superior to all other factions, be them political, religious or racial. To do so is to establish unequal as the new normal, it is the path to famine, oppression, chaos, and biblical kings. Yet, even the most sly and cagey would be king must keep in mind, once it is broken, others will vie for the role of dictator as well.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
