To R. Scot Clark and his blogpost on how the phrase ‘check your privilege’ is to be ignored because it causes harm rather than providing help. This appeared in the Acton blog.
Link to article cited by the blogpost: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/no-i-wont-check-my-privilege
The problem with the above article is that the article cited conflates the different kinds of privileges that exist rather than providing distinctions between privileges based in bigotry and privileges that are earned. That and article cited misrepresents the 1988 concept of privilege in terms of how it relates to racism and sexism. And all of that is done to discredit an anti-nonconservative viewpoint on privilege.
Asking people to check their privilege at the door can be done for multiple reasons. And thus automatically classifying the use of the phrase 'check your privilege' as an ad hominem attack is wrong. Quite often, people need to check their privilege at the door when discussing the plights of groups they have no familiarity with. Such examples can include a wealthy person blaming a homeless person for their status or a straight and religiously conservative Christian denying that the LGBT community has been significantly marginalized in America society for centuries. In either case, a person who has no experience with what the people from other groups experience is making claims about what life is like for people from those groups.
We could listen to two people from vastly different ideological camps talk about privilege. First is Anthony Bradley. Though I am not a fan of his conservative political-economic ideologies as they have been posted on the Acton blog, I will always be indebted to him because he helped me understand what privilege was in the first place by talking about how he has to cope with the lack of certain privileges while enjoying others. The following comes from one of his posts (see http://blog.acton.org/archives/64617-racial-reconciliation-without-intersectionality-privilege.html ):
In other words, to be an able-bodied, heterosexual, financially stable, evangelical white person walking around in America denying that he or she directly benefits from white privilege, regardless of family background, is to deny the truth...
As I have said before, whatever cultural privileges we have been given, either by race or class, what matters is whether or not we use our privileges to help those who do not have them. Our economic, genetic, or socially-conditioned privileges are not for the purpose of protecting and conserving said privileges for ourselves, but rather to pass on the benefits to others who are on the margins. Our privileges are bestowed upon us by God so that we may use them to love our neighbors well (Matt 22:36-40). It is by embracing God’s providence in this way that we are protected from the poison of envy or a sense of entitlement. Privilege is an opportunity to honor God through reciprocity and charity.
Now observe the similarities between the direction of Bradley's thoughts on privilege and what Noam Chomsky says (see https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2013/01/201311294541129427.html ):
The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have.
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To Louis Markos and his blogpost that defends those in the military and our police forces. His defense is in response to criticisms of the military and police forces and some of the tactics they use to get the job done to protect us. My response only deals with the military aspect of the article. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
There is a larger world to our recognition of our military and others than what Markos acknowledges. That larger world exists outside the individual actions of our military that are either praised or condemned. That larger world has to do with the top of our military's chain of command. It has to do with why our leaders sent our troops either into harm's way or to provide harm's way for others. And we have to deal with this wider perspective if we are to do our part in ensuring that the sacrifices made by our troops are not exploited for whatever gains those at the top can garner for themselves.
However, we are told not to look at the larger world when our troops are sent into action. And the authoritarian in all us moves us to respond with a vibrant 'YES SIR!' to that prohibition. To respond that way helps us to feel a closer connection with the troops. But the problem with that authoritarian response is that it shows a preference for obedient ignorance over informed dissent. The authoritarian response to the prohibition into questioning why our troops are sent where they are is a selfish response for it makes life easier for us and makes us feel good about ourselves.
So if we really care about our nation and our troops, there is one thing we can never afford to do. We must never allow the valor of our troops to be used as a moral shield to protect our government's foreign policies from criticism. That is because whether our troops are really fighting for our freedoms depends on why our leaders sent them into action. And there have been too many instances in American history where our troops have been sent into battle for the benefit of some elites rather than for the freedom of all. And we have all had to pay the costs for the misuse of our military Including our troops.
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To Joseph Sunde and his blogpost criticizing Seattle’s plan of taxing businesses a fixed amount based on each full-time employee it has. This appeared in the Acton blog.
The problem with Sunde's approach is that it advocates for less social responsibility for those who have benefited the most from the economic system, the infrastructure and the multiple groups of stakeholders that exist in a given area. Not that all regulations and taxes are good, each regulation and tax must be judged on a case-by-case basis. But we should note that the more the tax burden is shifted from those who have more resources to those who have fewer resources, then the future becomes the demise of both infrastructure and the services for those in need. And after a certain amount of demise, those businesses that were given the biggest breaks, leave because their place becomes uninhabitable.
In addition, Sunde fails to appreciate the older definition of the term stakeholder. The older definition of the term 'stakeholder' included all that were impacted by the operation of the business. Such a definition stands in contrast to today's de facto definition of executives and shareholders and sometimes customers. In addition to that, Sunde fails to note how businesses benefit from quality societies that value fairness and human life, provide a good education, promote a good environment, and such. And because those factors contribute to a business's success, why should anyone believe that it is unfair for businesses to the biggest financial support to ensure those factors. To unnecessarily cut regulations and taxes for those businesses that both can contribute to and benefit the most from what a decent society can provide makes parasites out of these businesses.
In the end, Sunde fails to see that unnecessarily cutting regulations and taxes enables a pathological self-centeredness in businesses. Such is at the heart of all deals that government makes with big businesses to entice them to stay. For that self-centeredness assumes that a business's only responsibility is to provide jobs for people so that the workers can support government services while those who financially benefit the most from a business's operation can better siphon off the profits of the business.
With today's neoliberalism that believes in cutting as much as is allowable a business's social responsibilities by unnecessarily eliminating regulations and taxes, we see an Ayn Rand coup in our government where everyone is expected to survive by fending for oneself regardless of how that hurts others. And that expectation become synonymous with personal responsibility. Eventually valuing human life disappears as the individual acquisition of profits and other things becomes more and more important than people.
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