Dan Popp
Unacceptable
By Dan Popp
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles.... – Hamlet, Act II, Scene 1, William Shakespeare
Ah, the transformational fundamentalists are at it again. Now the Senate has passed a bill to force business owners to hire yet another protected class of people. I'm not sure that homosexuals are less likely than anyone else to get a job while the current War on Work continues, but this legislation is supposed to be the ENDA that. Here's how one petition worded the argument for the act: "It is simply unacceptable that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people can still be fired or refused a job based on characteristics wholly unrelated to job performance."
"Unacceptable?"
Over and over the proponents of ENDA find a world without ENDA unacceptable. Not just unacceptable, but simply unacceptable. Oh, the poor dears.
Unfortunately, their relativism cannot require me to find unacceptable what they find unacceptable. But consistency isn't really their bag, man. They find coerced conformance to their doctrine perfectly acceptable. So I will be forced to accept what I find unacceptable. Their word for that is "tolerance."
Now, in case you're reading my column for the first time, I don't believe that business owners should discriminate against workers on the basis of anything except job performance. But neither do I believe that owners may be forced to act in their own interest, as conceived by outsiders. Do I find it "unacceptable" that a business owner would harm his own enterprise by not hiring the best employee he can find? What on earth does that mean? To demand that humans always act rationally is irrational. No, what I find unacceptable is the use of legal force to compel a person to do business with someone he doesn't wish to. All Americans should find that unacceptable.
Think about the giant, flaming, runaway manure train known as "Obamacare." Why do we have that? Well, ostensibly it was because there were 30 million (then it was 44 million) people uninsured. These people had access to health care; they just didn't have health insurance. The voluntary cost shifting of the old system was simply unacceptable. Leftists demanded forced cost shifting.
Or we could talk about the illegal immigration problem. A leftist will find it unacceptable that those who break our laws aren't treated as heroes. I find it unacceptable that our government refuses to enforce our laws. Why does your "unacceptable" trump mine?
Most things the left finds "unacceptable" today have in fact been accepted for the whole of human history. People were allowed to make their own, mutually beneficial contracts; people had to obey the laws and rulers had to enforce the laws; people took their own risks, made their own decisions and provided for themselves and for each other, voluntarily. All of these are now, suddenly, "unacceptable."
There's an implied demand in the word, "unacceptable." Leftists and I have irreconcilable differences, I'm afraid, in our beliefs about what constitutes a demand on me. In Judeo-Christian morality, justice makes demands – need does not. A poor person may not steal a loaf of bread from a rich person. The community's good of being safe from thieves trumps the hungry person's good of eating bread that isn't his.
To the leftist, it's the opposite: The need of the poor person trumps the needs of the community. The "unfortunate" one holds the scepter. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, "In the United States, where the poor rule, the rich have always some reason to dread the abuses of their power." As in any system, you get what you reward. To plunder the vulnerable "community," new victims will be multiplied and manufactured. When need constitutes a demand, everyone becomes needy.
The root problem is that leftists find reality unacceptable. But, since they've rejected God and embraced relativism, they have no solid foundation of morality on which to build their desired change. So they pretend. They use the word "unacceptable" in place of the word "sin." It is a moral imperative in the mouth of the man who disbelieves in moral imperatives. It seems to carry a lot of weight, unless you think about it.
ENDA is another in a long line of laws that would end a person's real rights (your right to property, your freedom of association), to create fake rights for someone else (my right to be employed by you against your will). Delusion is very simply acceptable.
It's unfortunate that some people suffer poverty, discrimination and racism. We, as individuals, should voluntarily do as much as we can to help those less fortunate. But fortune can't really be "outrageous," (simply unacceptable!) unless Fortune has a will. And then we've allowed gods into the picture.
Either there is a God – in which case we must accept His diagnosis and His prescription for the world's ills; or there is no God – and you're merely an animal raging against randomness.
And what you find unacceptable is irrelevant.
© Dan Popp
November 6, 2013
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles.... – Hamlet, Act II, Scene 1, William Shakespeare
Ah, the transformational fundamentalists are at it again. Now the Senate has passed a bill to force business owners to hire yet another protected class of people. I'm not sure that homosexuals are less likely than anyone else to get a job while the current War on Work continues, but this legislation is supposed to be the ENDA that. Here's how one petition worded the argument for the act: "It is simply unacceptable that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people can still be fired or refused a job based on characteristics wholly unrelated to job performance."
"Unacceptable?"
Over and over the proponents of ENDA find a world without ENDA unacceptable. Not just unacceptable, but simply unacceptable. Oh, the poor dears.
Unfortunately, their relativism cannot require me to find unacceptable what they find unacceptable. But consistency isn't really their bag, man. They find coerced conformance to their doctrine perfectly acceptable. So I will be forced to accept what I find unacceptable. Their word for that is "tolerance."
Now, in case you're reading my column for the first time, I don't believe that business owners should discriminate against workers on the basis of anything except job performance. But neither do I believe that owners may be forced to act in their own interest, as conceived by outsiders. Do I find it "unacceptable" that a business owner would harm his own enterprise by not hiring the best employee he can find? What on earth does that mean? To demand that humans always act rationally is irrational. No, what I find unacceptable is the use of legal force to compel a person to do business with someone he doesn't wish to. All Americans should find that unacceptable.
Think about the giant, flaming, runaway manure train known as "Obamacare." Why do we have that? Well, ostensibly it was because there were 30 million (then it was 44 million) people uninsured. These people had access to health care; they just didn't have health insurance. The voluntary cost shifting of the old system was simply unacceptable. Leftists demanded forced cost shifting.
Or we could talk about the illegal immigration problem. A leftist will find it unacceptable that those who break our laws aren't treated as heroes. I find it unacceptable that our government refuses to enforce our laws. Why does your "unacceptable" trump mine?
Most things the left finds "unacceptable" today have in fact been accepted for the whole of human history. People were allowed to make their own, mutually beneficial contracts; people had to obey the laws and rulers had to enforce the laws; people took their own risks, made their own decisions and provided for themselves and for each other, voluntarily. All of these are now, suddenly, "unacceptable."
There's an implied demand in the word, "unacceptable." Leftists and I have irreconcilable differences, I'm afraid, in our beliefs about what constitutes a demand on me. In Judeo-Christian morality, justice makes demands – need does not. A poor person may not steal a loaf of bread from a rich person. The community's good of being safe from thieves trumps the hungry person's good of eating bread that isn't his.
To the leftist, it's the opposite: The need of the poor person trumps the needs of the community. The "unfortunate" one holds the scepter. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, "In the United States, where the poor rule, the rich have always some reason to dread the abuses of their power." As in any system, you get what you reward. To plunder the vulnerable "community," new victims will be multiplied and manufactured. When need constitutes a demand, everyone becomes needy.
The root problem is that leftists find reality unacceptable. But, since they've rejected God and embraced relativism, they have no solid foundation of morality on which to build their desired change. So they pretend. They use the word "unacceptable" in place of the word "sin." It is a moral imperative in the mouth of the man who disbelieves in moral imperatives. It seems to carry a lot of weight, unless you think about it.
ENDA is another in a long line of laws that would end a person's real rights (your right to property, your freedom of association), to create fake rights for someone else (my right to be employed by you against your will). Delusion is very simply acceptable.
It's unfortunate that some people suffer poverty, discrimination and racism. We, as individuals, should voluntarily do as much as we can to help those less fortunate. But fortune can't really be "outrageous," (simply unacceptable!) unless Fortune has a will. And then we've allowed gods into the picture.
Either there is a God – in which case we must accept His diagnosis and His prescription for the world's ills; or there is no God – and you're merely an animal raging against randomness.
And what you find unacceptable is irrelevant.
© Dan Popp
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