What Shall We Do With Our Freedom?
There’s something deeply ironic about hardcore identitarians demanding equity in all spheres of life. After all, if group identities are so important, we should expect that members of different groups will have different inclinations that will lead them to be over- or underrepresented in a given field, be it finance or athletics or journalism or what have you. And yet we everywhere we hear calls from identitarians for proportional representation in all fields. In this clip, I outline the incoherence of this position and explain why we should reject it.
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This is off-topic, but I would like to request that Glenn invite Coleman Hughes on for a discussion of his latest piece about the George Floyd/Derek Chauvin trial, in today’s The Free Press:
https://open.substack.com/pub/bariweiss/p/coleman-hughes-derek-chauvin-george-floyd?r=ltld3&utm_medium=ios
For what it's worth, here is Machiavelli's experience with equity in the Florentine Republic:
"The war had continued from 1422 to 1427, and the citizens of Florence were so wearied of the taxes that had been imposed during that time, that it was resolved to revise them, preparatory to their amelioration. That they might be equalized according to the means of each citizen, it was proposed that whoever possessed property of the value of one hundred florins should pay half a florin of taxes.... The new method of rating formed a powerful check to the tyranny of the great... But as it is found men are never satisfied, but that the possession of one advantage only makes them desire more, the people, not content with the equality of taxation which the new law produced, demanded that the same rule should be applied to past years; that in investigation should be made to determine how much...the rich had paid less than their share, and that they should now pay up to an equality with those who, in order to meet the demand unjustly made, had been compelled to sell their possessions. This proposal alarmed the great ... and in self-defense they unceasingly decried it, declaring it in the highest degree unjust...."