‘Two Cheers for Double Standards’
19th March 2012
Stanley Fish has decided that they don’t have to pretend to be fair any more.
The idea is that in the public sphere (as opposed to the private sphere in which you can have and vent your prejudices) you should not privilege your own views to the extent that they justify treating those with opposing views unequally and unfairly.
Yeah, that is the idea … for the rest of us. Stanley, however, has a different idea.
If we think about the Rush Limbaugh dust-up from the non-liberal — that is, non-formal — perspective, the similarity between what he did and what Schultz and Maher did disappears. Schultz and Maher are the good guys; they are on the side of truth and justice. Limbaugh is the bad guy; he is on the side of every nefarious force that threatens our democracy. Why should he get an even break?
In other words, let’s all be Mafia, the primary adherents of this approach in the modern world. If you’re not a Made Guy, you ain’t shit, and needn’t be treated as anything but shit. Hey, presto, let’s just erase the last four hundred years of human progress.
If you do that you will not be displaying a double standard; you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair. “Fair” is a weak virtue; it is not even a virtue at all because it insists on a withdrawal from moral judgment.
And there you have the ‘progressive’ program in a nutshell. Muslims would love this guy; they all think the same way.
March 20th, 2012 at 07:20
Another post which should have gone under ‘Whose Turn Is It To Be The Victim?’. Evidently it’s poor Rush Limbaugh’s turn…