By What Authority?

Guest Post by The Zman

When you start out in your life, you have no conception of right and wrong, for the same reason you don’t understand string theory. Babies start out with the absolute minimum of knowledge to live. Just as you had to learn to tie your shoes, you had to learn the difference between right and wrong. There are things you should not do and things you should not say. Similarly, there are things you should say or do. Morality is the set of social rules you initially learn from your family and then from your community.

Morality comes from authority. The reason why you accept the moral instruction of your parents is they are your parents. It may be that you are programmed to accept them as moral authorities or simply that they are the default moral authorities in your life as you grow up. Similarly, maybe you accept the morality of your community, because it is what your parents accept. If there is a conflict between what you learn at home versus what you learn outside, you have to decide who is the moral authority.

This is what experts and theologians call “the obvious.” Morality is the code of conduct of your community. For most of human history, the moral authority was the religion of the people. The holy men of the religion, perhaps relying on an oral tradition or written texts, would shape and enforce the moral code of the people..The check on the holy man was that everyone knew the rules and the source of the rules, things like stories and legends, so he could not just wing it. He had to live within the code too.

Again, this is all obvious stuff, but it is worth remembering when thinking about the de-platforming and censorship efforts. Here is a story about the battle going on with Patreon, the fundraising site used by “content creators.” The site has been purging even people mildly skeptical of the Progressive project and that has resulted in some big names like Sam Harris leaving the platform. The Times reporter spoke with the “head of trust and safety” for the company and this is the important bit from the story.

“Jaqueline Hart, Patreon’s head of trust and safety, said her team watches for and will investigate complaints about any content posted on Patreon and on other sites like YouTube and Facebook that violates what it defines as hate speech. That includes “serious attacks, or even negative generalizations, of people based on their race [and] sexual orientation,” she has said.”

Now, everyone with the slightest awareness knows that the rules with regards to “negative generalizations” apply only to non-whites. The people who rule over us want to make it illegal to notice any differences between whites and non-whites, so noticing is strictly prohibited. The exception is non-whites say what they want or even call for harm against white males. It’s why white males in TV ads and in movies are always the bad guy or the bungler, while non-whites are brave and wise.

That bit of hypocrisy has become so internalized that even the steam whistles of cable chat shows don’t bother mentioning it. The more important question is upon what authority did it become immoral to make “negative generalizations” about anyone? It’s certainly not coming from Christian authorities. In fact, the Abrahamic religions are chock full of “negative generalizations” about all sorts of people. Up until fairly recent, the basis of comedy was “negative generalizations of race and sexual orientation.”

It’s one of those things that just seems to happen in late empire America. The usual pattern is a call for tolerance, which quickly becomes intolerance of the lack of tolerance and then finally, the enshrinement of the minority view or identity as a holy item. To paraphrase Chris Caldwell, we quickly go from a situation where the new anti-white identity is too weak to end special protections to a situation where the new anti-white identity is too strong to challenge the special protections.

Again, how does this happen? By what authority are these people deciding that it is not permissible to question the moral superiority of people based on “their race or sexual orientation?” This question is never posed to people like Jaqueline Hart of Patreon and she would never expose herself to people who would dare question her authority on these matters. In fact, our friends the Bible believing Christians never question it either, despite that fact that Jesus was a guy fond of asking these sorts of questions.¹

That said, you get the sense that the people demanding the rest of us abide by this new morality know they lack the moral authority. This video, by a popular YouTuber, where he recounts his conversation with Jacqueline Hart, is instructive. At one point, she hints that Patreon is being forced by their “partners” to purge people. The implication is that the banks are really behind this effort. When pressed on it she changes the subject. What she is doing is conjuring a authority to justify her actions.

This is instructive and something dissidents should train themselves to press whenever dealing with the Left. In the work setting, for example, diversity training should always be referred to as moral instruction. It’s a subtle thing that is effective at letting normal people know that they are being preached to be people who see themselves as our moral superiors. It nibbles away at the false consensus and plants a seed of doubt about whose authority upon which these new moral codes rest.

That’s the important aspect of all radicalism, especially American Progressivism. It is just an appeal to mob rule when you dig into it. They browbeat people into conforming to some new moral code and then point to public acceptance of it as their source of moral authority when called on it. It’s why vinegar drinking scolds like Jacqueline Hart decorate their sermons with the word “community” all the time. The enforced conformity is the only moral authority they have to support their codes of conduct.

¹Mark 11:27