The Z-man, as is often the case, says something more eloquently than I can, even though I already knew this and already agreed with it, his post is better than anything I could say on the subject.
One of the great tricks conservatism plays on normal people is to offer up a set of false choices in response to regime morality. The ruling class comes out with some new thing and conservatives come out with new responses. One choice is something the regime has declared a fatwa against, while the other choice is allowed. The job of the conservatives is to herd their people into the acceptable choice. Often, the acceptable choice is just an extreme version of what the regime offers.
The best example is racism. Way back in the last century, elements of the ruling class invented a new sin called racism. For most of human history, everyone just accepted the fact that people were different and people liked to be around their own. This was so obviously true no one had to think much about it. The exception was when one group of people tried to move into the area of another group of people. Invasions always led to violence, which is why invasions were immoral.
For reasons no one bothered to explain, elements of the ruling class decided that it was immoral for you to want to live around people like you. Further, you were not allowed to notice the differences in people. That was this new thing called racism. For several generations now, conservatives have been trying to prove that the Democrats are the real racists. You see, the greatest conservative principle is opposing racism more than the people conservatives claim to oppose.
This desire to be more of whatever the regime is promoting infects everything nook and cranny of the conservative mind. When the regime decided sodomy was a sacrament, conservatives celebrated sodomy. When the regime decided men in dresses could stalk your children in the playground, conservative suddenly discovered a new sacred principle in favor of crossdressers. To be a conservative is to fully embrace every degenerate moral claim of their alleged opponents.
Here is a good example of how conservatism is just the extreme version of yesterday’s moral claims by their opponents. The Supreme Court is looking at two cases related to freedom of association. Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina challenge the race policies of their respective defendants. In both cases, the schools discriminate based on race.
What the regime has always argued is that white people have dominated the world due to dumb luck and their unique cruelty. Whether it is the exploitation of resources held by nonwhites or simply good fortune, Europeans have unfairly outperformed the rest of the world and this is immoral. Therefore, it is required that current white people be made to suffer in order to balance the scales. This is the moral claim made in all policies under the umbrella of restorative justice.
One way to even the scales is to force whites to accept nonwhites into their lives so that the nonwhites can partake in the good fortune of whites. In education, for example, the underlying assumption is the teachers in white schools do a better job teaching their subjects than the teachers in nonwhite schools. The proof is Asians, who prefer white schools over black schools. Asians do very well, so it must be that special magic that exists in white schools, but not in black schools.
In the middle of the last century, a natural right enjoyed by all humans since the dawn of time was stripped from Americans. You no longer had the right to place your body next to another body without permission from the state. Further, you no longer had the right to deny nonwhites access to your life. Effectively, what was done is the forging of a new right possessed only by certain nonwhites. That right is the right to access white people and the things they create.
The rational opposition to this is that all people, even white people, have a right to make the most of their talents. Therefore, they have the right to work with whomever they think is in their best interest. This is a foundational argument of Western liberalism and the basis for market economics. Since you own you and have the right to use your labor as you see fit, it naturally follows that you have the right to associate, or not associate, with whomever you choose.
Conservatives do not make that argument. As you see in that post, their argument is that you have no rights whatsoever. You are not even allowed to notice that people are different and posses different qualities. Instead, in order to be even more berserk about race than the most berserk member of the new religion, you have to poke out your eyes and rip off your ears. The conservative principle with regards to the human condition is to be to the extreme left of the new religion.
Of course, the moral position here is that Harvard, a private college, can discriminate however it pleases with regards to admissions. If they want a freshman class of left-handed Korean midgets, they can only admit those people. On the other hand, North Carolina is a public university and as such must admit students according to a set of rules applicable to all American citizens. That would also bar them from favoring legacies and potential sports stars in admissions.
You see, while we human beings and citizens enjoy the absolute right of free association, our government does not have that right. Otherwise, it is not our government and is instead an occupying force. Foundational to liberal society is free association and that means we collectively own the state. As equal partners in the state, the state cannot favor one group over another. Again, equality before the law is a bedrock item in a moral society.
The writer of that post is probably a decent sort. He wants to do the right thing, but he has been conditioned by conservatism to think the right thing is always the most extreme version of whatever the liberals are peddling. It is so ingrained in the conservative mind that they do not notice it. If the liberals suddenly favored wearing colorful jock straps on their heads, conservatives would be boasting about how their new headgear is the best ever.
The result of this madness is the courts will now decide if the state has a right to discriminate against white people or no one has a right to discriminate against anyone for any reason at all. Given the makeup of the courts, the most likely result will be to ban the most basic right of free association. In effect, the new rule will render citizens as prisoners in a permission state. Conservatism will have made otherwise free people into servants of the managerial state.
Let me be clear again. I am not a conservative. I'm sympathetic to conservatives, as not being at least crazy and hateful like liberals are. However, conservatives are dumb as a box of rocks and have naively destroyed a functional and peaceful society because they were too stupid to defend it against insane and berserk attacks from Marxism. They failed in the second most important of all tasks as a generation; to pass on a successful and thriving society to the next generation.
