Comment by forapurpose
9 years ago
Here's how I think about protected classes:
In a democracy, the majority has limitless power. They can vote to oppress or kill the minority, which survives only due to the majority's good will and whim. Democracy is the angry mob. 'Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner', goes a saying.
The solution is constitutional democracy, which includes rules protecting the minority, via civil rights. In the U.S., these rules are the Bill of Rights. The rule of law also is essential.
But it's very clear that even those rights and laws are not sufficient: In the U.S., slavery, segregation, lynchings of blacks, and oppression of other politically vulnerable groups, including women and LGBTQ, has continued in varying degrees for over 200 years despite the Bill of Rights and rule of law.
The politically vulnerable groups - the groups the majority can oppress and kill and destroy - need additional protection. (That's why when people try to make some logical inference that oppression of white males is the same thing, they miss the core factor: White males are not politically vulnerable to the majority;, they are the majority (in terms of power); a quick look at a group photo of the people in power in every domain of American and European life will show you that.
The only reason to exclude currently-powerful people from basic protections (rather than making basic protections universal) is if you think that one day, those currently-powerful people will be vulnerable enough to need them. And further, that at that point, they don't deserve to be protected in the manner that currently vulnerable people deserve to be protected.
Remember the last time that popular sentiment regarded a group of rich, influential people as not needing those should-be-universal protections because of their privileged position? And then decided that this group was the cause of all their problems? Let's not let that happen again.
You are comparing protection of vulnerable groups in the U.S. to Nazi persecution of Jews?
This is a nitpick but an important one: the U.S. isn’t a constitutional democracy.
It’s a constitutional republic. And there is a difference.
As far as protected classes; the U.S. Constitution makes each individual a protected class. The protection of individual liberty is the cornerstone of the United States. (Or at least it was.)
This idea that some groups need more protection is ludicrous. We are saying that some people are less equal than others. What is needed is a consistent and impartial application of the law – which, granted, was not always the case. But, the philosophical concept of protected class goes against the concept of equality.
Committing a crime against a gay person IS A CRIME. That exact same crime against a non gay person IS A CRIME. The idea that either one of those should be punished differently is more Animal Farm than US Constitution.
This idea of the thought police is obscene and the very opposite of John Locke.
A man should not be punished for thoughts. A man should not be punished because of his motivations. A man should only be punished for his actions.
That is an ideal, maybe even one that I support, but after over 200 years and overwhelming evidence, you must concede that it does not work in practice.
> A man should not be punished because of his motivations. A man should only be punished for his actions.
To nitpick a little: The law absolutely looks at motivations. For example, pre-meditated murder (1st degree murder) is a worse crime than non-pre-meditated murder (2nd degree), which is worse than unintentional murder (3rd degree).
That's a considered yet succinct explanation. Thank you.