It Doesn’t Affect You, But It Does

A Fantastic Read on the subtlety of groups or individuals using "As long as it doesn't affect anyone else, it's fine" line repeatedly or isolated.

The opening paragraph in the essay:

The libertarian ideal that everyone can do what they want and anything not affecting others in the strictest 1st degree will not have a depreciative or dilatory effect others, and thus society, is based upon a blind faith that the way, the truth, the light, of Randian enlightenment can not, and will not, be snuffed out a la Anthem because the choices of others does not, in the strictest 1st degree, command another.
But this is based on an overly idealistic view of mankind. It is the idealistic view that once a great evil is purged, that a true utopia will arise once properly established; it is the idealistic view shared by Communists, Progressives, and other assorted socialists.

It seems the collective elite class mindset is set upon faith that man will one day wake from his slumber and claim the elusive wisdom he's been chasing for centuries.

At this juncture in our epoch, civilizations and moral codes do not simply arise out of nothing. As the Political Hat writes further:

It is something that must be conserved. It calls not for magicians to alchemists who can bring forth purity of essence from some invented and contrived trick. It calls for stewards to keep and protect our civic inheritance, and to protect society’s evolution from the hands and machinations of intelligent design by unintelligent designers.

Adherence to a social contract or laws is essential as anarchy isn't a viable means of any rule. Perhaps it has its place for a short time as Mencken wrote, "Every normal man must tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats". But it is not sustainable.

...because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.

The classic cycle of societal ills goes like this:

• A right is articulated, promoted, and sanctioned as "legal" and becomes "protected". 
• Once "legal" how can it possibly be immoral and how could anyone oppose this? Do you zealots really want to take away someone else's freedom? 
• You're a bigot because you want to criminalize this beautiful, legal, and protected "right" 
• You're discriminating against a class of citizens and you should feel bad. 

He further writes:

such Leftist viewpoints presume an oppressor and oppressed dichotomy. Thus, any dissent is considered proof of evil and oppression.

Dissent is not tolerated and is caricatured as fringe, extreme, and narrow minded, amid the other colorful characterizations of the "anti" crowd. The virtue signalling from the milquetoast people afraid to not conform the outrage du jour is omni-present.

We are still told that such eventualities are always “crazy” and will never come to be, despite that fact that they always do. As Lord Melbourne noted:

“What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.”

True to its core, predictions based on even a cursory look back at history eventually come to pass. Social engineers, bleeding hearts, and well to do individuals, as well as the state. come to find out the genie they massaged cannot be put into its bottle.

From an appeal to tolerance, when out of power, to crushing dissent when in power, certain truths become manifest:



Calvin and Hobbes ever astute commentary on absolute power. So, in the name of equality we see exercised special privilege and power for the select few.

The pretense that such demands don’t affect the lives of others now has been abandoned, replaced by two options: (1) get over it and get in line; or (2) be pushed to the margins of society, losing your reputation—and possibly your career—in the process.

“In version 2.0 of the New Regime, even if you can point to a direct, immediate, and significant intrusion on your life, your opinion is irrelevant (and perhaps bigoted) when compared to ‘social progress.’

Often heard in the midst of this howling is the appeal to the calendar. "It's the 2000's! It's not your grandparents' world anymore. We are progressing as a society!" C.S. Lewis wrote succintly, "Truth is not determined by a calendar". I don't look at what decade or year it is to determine if something is just, fair, or moral.

In an awesome paragraph, The Political Hat writes:

Because “no man is an island”, natural societal tendencies towards tolerance, which a just society that had not only the liberty to choose as they will but the virtue to choose correctly can endure, is turned against such liberty and virtue to destroy both and institute some crazed intelligently designed utopia created ex nihilo and developed en vacuo by self-evidentiary unintelligent designers. It is a fallacy of first principles.

As Burke noted:

“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.”
PH quotes another writer here:

Further, as James FitzJames Stephen notes:

“To me this question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or a bad thing. It is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstance, and a complete answer to the question, In what cases is liberty good and in what cases is it bad? would involve not merely a universal history of mankind, but a complete solution of the problems which such a history would offer.”

The cornerstone of the argument PH makes is capped here:

The private actions of two individuals in the privacy of a private bedroom in a private house, indeed, does not directly affect others in the 1st degree. Re-writing social norms, mores, and folkways, however, does unequivocally affect others by the tyrannical and conniving mutation of society, taking advantage of and abusing the natural tolerance of a society that has become so used to great liberty with the concomitant wisdom to choosevirtuously, in order to unintelligently design a utopia ex nihilo in vacuo that is antithetical and ablative of the very virtue and liberty that made such tolerance possible!

Yes, decent people are tolerant. And SJW's take advantage of that tolerance and push it to the edge by invoking the behavior we are to be tolerant of is now virtuous. And don't we want virtue in our society? Yes, so shut up!

A “private” right ceases to become “private” when it impugns in any way, shape, or form on others, particularly in an intentional, economic, and political way.

This is the elephant in the room. People say they want the state out of their private lives/bedrooms, but then look to the state to sanction the behavior in order to legitimize it. We cannot conflate "legal" with "virtue". They do not mix unless a society is also operating in wisdom, with an eye on the past and an eye on the consequences of such "rights".