Since regular readers of this blog are well aware that all roads ultimately wind their way back to “diversity” and affirmative action, some will have wondered exactly how I would relate the ongoing Obama scandals to those racial issues and why I have taken so long. Well, your anxious wait is over. With considerable help from Michael Franc’s excellent piece on National Review Online, I can now point with some confidence to modern liberalism’s obsession with identity politics as an under-appreciated culprit in our current conflicts over the government targeting groups of citizens for hostile treatment.
Franc, vice president of government studies at the Heritage Foundation, points out that
the new revelations indicate that IRS officials targeted tea-party and other conservative outfits solely because they fit the profile of being “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government” or “educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.” Golly!
The identity politics practiced by these agencies challenges the very essence of our Founding. The understanding of liberty that prevailed at the Constitutional Convention began with an acceptance of the “inalienable rights” we possess as individuals. These rights inhere in us as human beings and predate the creation of any government. Our liberty is not apportioned to us according to the whims of government officials. Government, rather, exists to defend the liberties we already possess.
The nature of that liberty, moreover, presumes that we are free to plot our life’s trajectory, define our dreams as we choose, and act accordingly. We are not bound by predestination as defined by our race, gender, family lineage, occupation, wealth or poverty, world view, or any other criterion deemed important by the government.
“The Obama administration’s pervasive adherence to group over individual identity,” Franc concludes, “creates a slippery slope that hastens other abuses of government.”
The Obama administration did not create that slippery slope — that was done by a generation of liberals who came to venerate group identity over individual rights — but it has added considerable grease.
All roads lead to diversity and inclusion. Your comment reminds me of yet another recent example, in Stephanie Coontz’s op-ed in the Sunday New York Times. Coontz, in this daring piece of medical advice, worthy of the New England Journal of Medicine, or Science, presents a novel remedy for those suffering nostalgia. That remedy is white guilt. When fond memories arise, and longing ensues, thinking about white privilege ads balance to one’s selectively warm memories. The op-ed is a stellar example of how any discussion, particularly in the Times, can wind its way to the deficiencies of white people.
And….the IRS under the Bush Administration targeted the NAACP and several Black pastors and ministers for what reason again?
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/14/when_the_irs_targeted_liberals/
–Cobra