"I Care More Than You Do"

I saw a dismissive defense of "woke" the other day on some random YouTube video. The vlogger defined woke as caring about the oppressed and the disadvantaged, and went on to imply that such caring only exists among the woke. As in, declaring that "my team cares" locks everyone else out of doing so.

Patent nonsense, of course, but very common. "Do things my way because I care about people" carries that implication of exclusivity, and with it a healthy dose of arrogance. Woke doesn't end there, however. If it were just "I care more than you do," it wouldn't be a big deal. As someone whose name I've long forgotten noted, woke without cancel culture wouldn't be a problem. The two, unfortunately, are intertwined, which led to my definition of woke:

Woke is coercion. Woke is divisiveness. Woke is a demand for submissive conformity. Woke is racism, sexism, and a fistful of other bigotries. Woke is the dehumanization of all who don't agree with you, so you feel less averse to treating them like shit, denying them their rights and liberties, and kicking them out of 'your' society. Woke is a club, in two ways: a weapon with which to smite your enemies, and a restricted space where undesirables are denied entry.

How does such a worldview emerge? It starts with the premise that people may be treated unequally, that the Golden Rule which has lubricated societies since humans first started forming them can safely be abandoned.

What is that Golden Rule? Variously, per Wikipedia:

• Treat others as you would like others to treat you.

• Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated.

• What you wish upon others, you wish upon yourself.

It's a lesson we're taught from childhood, and one that we need to be taught because it runs against human nature. While humans are social creatures, we are also tribal, and throughout history have treated our own better than we've treated others. Conflict and war are, as a result, natural human behaviors, unfortunately.

Living standards don't mix well with war, so humans figured out, somewhere along the way, that advancing them was benefited by the Golden Rule.

It worked. When we cooperate instead of being in conflict, when we look at each other as equals with equal rights, when we embrace the precept that “my freedom to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose,” our societies thrive.

Unfortunately, lives of ease can produce what Freud called "the narcissism of minor differences." Since it's in our nature, we look for reasons to sort ourselves, to fulfill our need to be tribal, and when the lesson of the Golden Rule is no longer held in high regard, things regress and decay.

Decay to a point where too many of our fellow citizens have so wrapped themselves in a Manichaean tribalism that they choose the side of evil simply because their team has told them to.

The domestic behaviors following the Gaza terrorist attack on Israel and Israel's response have unmasked many undercurrents in our society. Among them is the revelation of how much Jew hatred (I'm following George Carlin's lead here, and will no longer soften Jew-hatred as “antisemitism”) there still is in our society - and that it seethes through the ranks of the Woke.

Since those ranks appear to be predominantly younger people, it's fair to ask how it has come to be that young people are sympathizing with the side that murdered babies and raped women, that outnumbers Jews 100 to 1 globally, that would expel all Jews from the Middle East (and, if we are to be honest, wipe them out), and that rejects multiculturalism, women's rights, gay rights, freedom of expression, freedom of (and from) religion, and many other things that the Woke consider sacrosanct. It's fair to ask how the side that has been demonstrably amenable to a two-state solution (that would be Israel) is the 'bad guy.' It's fair to ask if these young people understand the implications of their "from the river to the sea" mantra.

We could ask, but we'd just get bile spit at us in too many cases, and risk violent response in too many cases. Horrifying tales such as that of the Jewish NY City schoolteacher having to lock herself in a classroom to avoid being assaulted and worse by a mob of hundreds of high schoolers are too numerous to be outliers.

All this derives from abandoning the Golden Rule. It's now OK to deny others the freedom to speak their minds. It's now OK to silence dissenting opinions. It's now OK to choose who gets to enjoy individual rights and liberties and who is to be denied them.

Here, we might be tempted to think that this is a new phenomenon, or that it's exclusively limited to the woke fringes. We libertarians have known better for a long time, however. Many of our fellow citizens who wouldn't ever be mistaken for being progressive or woke or social-justice-y have "unequal" tendencies of their own, in that they have no qualms about restricting others' behaviors when they don't agree with them. Or, to take other people's money to hand it out as they think best. Or, about piling a heap of rules on society in order to shape it to their preferences. That the bulk of these exceed, at this point, the intent of the Constitution and the precepts of limited government with enumerated powers becomes less of a concern to them every day, with "I care more than you do" veneering over these Golden Rule infringements.

The enormous irony of people committing acts of violence in order to demonstrate that they care more than the rest of us is lost on them. As Steve Martin observed decades ago, "we don't get that here." To them, it's not ironic, because they don't treat others equally or see every individual as having the same rights as others. This has all been taught to them, as have the notions that words can be violence and actual violence can be not-violence depending on who they're talking about. It is the essence of inequality and a naked rejection of the Golden Rule.

Those of us who still embrace equality and the Golden Rule are at a major disadvantage, but we cannot allow ourselves to descend into like-kind behavior. Just as the Israelis are stuck with operating at a much higher level of regard for civilian and collateral damage than Hamas, we must, if we are to preserve the notion of equality and hold onto a moral high ground, resurrect the Golden Rule and abide by what comes with it. This means we mustn't try to silence the jackasses marching for Hamas (it also serves when we allow them to out and damn themselves by their own words).

Until, that is, they violate others’ rights. When they dare encroach on the "tip of my nose," I am perfectly within my rights to respond in kind. The libertarian non-aggression principle is about initiation of force, not about pacifistic acceptance of a beating.

And, when people who purport to "care" more than you do violate your liberties, feel free to tell them that, no, they don't. Giving away other people's money is not charity, restricting other people's actions is not liberty, and siding with those who do does not make them better than you.