Too many victims spoil the stew.

Or, David Bernstein ... for the win!

I'm lifting his entire post this morning from Volokh. If ever we needed an honest discussion, too long postponed because of taboo topics, we should think on these things.

[David Bernstein, June 15, 2009 at 10:57am] Trackbacks
Peretz on the Cairo Speech: Marty Peretz has won a lot of ridicule of late, primarily for a series of ill-thought out blog posts. But his recent article on Obama's Cairo speech is superb. (H/T: Instapundit)

One aspect of the speech that hasn't received sufficient attention is the focus on victimology: Israelis were victims of the Holocaust, Palestinians victims of dislocation after the founding of Israel, Americans the victim of the 9/11 terrorists, Arabs the victims of Western imperialism, and so forth.

That this appeals to Obama is not surprising. He and I attended law school at the same time, Obama at Harvard and me at Yale. Victimology was all the rage. It gave one not only moral standing, but, oddly enough (like Sotomayor's "wise Latina") a certain level of intellectual standing.

During our first year in law school, there was a one-day nationwide "student strike for diversity" at elite law schools, including Harvard and Yale. (I don't know for sure whether Obama was involved in this "strike," but he gave a speech on behalf of uber-diversity advocate, and Harvard lawprof, Derrick Bell.) At Yale, students gave speeches throughout the day. What struck me at the time was how eager, almost desperate, the various student speech-givers were to be perceived as victims.

This included not just "people of color," but gays, Jews, Moromons, Catholics, and so on. Not a member of a racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual minority? Perhaps you were victimized by being a "First Generation Professional," such that you didn't know what suit to wear for law firm interviews, or which fork to grasp at lunch with your interviewers. (I wasn't quite a first-generation professional, yet I also didn't know these things, but I hardly wallowed in self-pity about it.) Or perhaps you had a learning disability. Or were from a less-than-ideal home. Or were less wealthy than your classmates. Or had to go to law school while raising a family.

The implicit message was that we all--even white male Protestants attending the best law school in the country, ready to walk into six figure jobs upon graduation--could be united in victimhood, and without such victimhood, our value as individuals is somehow diminished. And this theme cropped up repeatedly in law school.

I've always wondered how the Ivy elite went so quickly from a bastion of self-confident, privileged WASP elitism to the opposite extreme of celebrating victimhood. Regardless, it's a unique way to run a foreign policy.

If you haven't tasted true freedom, licking at the crumbs of victimhood might seem satisfying. But when you feel the wind in your face -- unshackled from restrictions that previously held you back -- you realize that whatever you can do to keep yourself from being victimized again and preserve your freedoms is ultimately worth it.

That's the true American dream right, nevermind the house and family in the suburbs. The more personal freedoms, the more diversity of choice, the less likely people are to fall prey to what happened to the best and brightest in Obama's generation: the rise of "community organizers" as a professional class. And the government acting as a parent.

ADDED:

"Mr. Gorbachev, like you we fought a war against the Nazis and suffered because of it, and like you we freed our serfs/slaves in the 1860s, who had suffered grievous oppression for generations. Now that we understand what we have in common, can we be friends now?"

Lol.