Law and Intolerance
We are inundated with laws intended to force tolerance and respect for diversity in our society, however, in terms of forcing such respect for actual, substantive diversity in new ideas for social or political change, they have not only completely failed but have had the opposite effect. Never in my life have I seen such desire by our American society and citizens to punish either economically or criminally any type of simply negligent or even just disagreeable behavior, as defined by what is acceptable behavior by the ruling economic class.
Our faith and belief in secular law as a provider of justice and a protector of the individual is not unique to American culture. We have inherited it and developed it from two lines of historical development: one starting from the Old Testament and another from the Roman Empire who absorbed it from Greek civilization. What is unique about our American faith in secular law are the particular procedural processes such as separation of powers, bills of rights, and constitutional government but not the actual substantive belief in secular law as a system of justice. Even a casual reading of ancient Greek and Roman writings show deep and moral concerns that the state through a system of laws and legal officials such as magistrates, senators, consuls, and others must create and enforce social justice. Though many of us see these ancient civilizations as hypocritical, unjust societies, they saw themselves as beacons of justice in a dark and unjust world and in many ways they were right.
However, there is a major difference between our modern faith in law and these ancient beliefs in law: the New Testament's Christian influence. By this influence, we see the individual, who is supposedly created in the image of God, as unique and significant independent of his significance or existence in a social construct. This influence establishes that secular law will always be an imperfect reflection of divine law and thus no matter how well intentioned or how many good consequences it may have at one point, it will eventually become just another source of power and corruption by which one individual or group of individuals unjustly controls another individual or group of individuals.
During the last 40 years there have been massive historical changes in social causes of injustice. The most obvious example of such is the elimination of legally enforced discrimination that occurred against women, racial, and ethnic minorities during most of our 200 years of history. This overall social concern for justice has permeated throughout our society and has been reflected in even such unpublicized changes as creating humane conditions for animals in slaughterhouses. As Thomas Aquinas said almost a thousand years ago, the humane treatment of animals in any point of society is necessary to establish a tolerant and peaceful society among humans because if humans get in the habit of mistreating animals it is much easier for them to mistreat each other. How much of these changes are due to the effects of laws and how much is due to economic changes that have given racial and ethnic minorities more economic power and have created economic surplus allowing for such concerns as animal rights is something that has gotten very little attention from academia. All of these past discriminatory laws that are now almost universally marked as evils were themselves seen as acts of social justice when they were first created.
However, from the practical standpoint, as one who deals on a daily basis with the enforcement, compliance, and effects of the laws that were enacted during the past few decades to ensure social justice, I have no doubt that these laws are already starting to be and will eventually be as great a source of social injustice as the laws they replaced. We are now in the situation where the wealthy and powerful at least in principle search to create diversity in their organizations. This occurs from a combination of factors: legally they are forced to do so to avoid discrimination claims; it is the current fad that diversity is good. As the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine has pointed out, the world is a social fabric with each thread interlinked with every other thread such that a change to one weakens, strengthens, or somehow changes another. The law enforces the social fads and the social fads reinforce the law.
In practice, what this desire for diversity means is that we will accept anyone regardless of their color, ethnic background, sex, national origin, or, in Massachusetts at least, the fad is even at the point of putting "sexual orientation" in this list (the morality of such a life choice of course cannot be discussed or you are branded a moron and bigot without further discussion), as long as the person thinks and acts the way they're supposed to think and act. Instead of large, powerful law firms only hiring white Anglo Saxon Protestants as they did in the past in order to maintain a safe and secure social environment with set ideas avoiding conflict, they are willing to accept anyone as long as they all think and act the same in whatever the current acceptable manner is. Since this is the method of operation of the rich and powerful, of course this method of operation is going to flow down to everyone else in society to even the smallest and weakest organization as long as they consider themselves part of the social norm. This has some very interesting results. Unlike 50 years ago, you can walk into a large, powerful and wealthy big law firm and see more than just white Anglo Saxon males in the reins of power: there will be Jews, Blacks, women, and all sorts of national origins. Many of these will be doing acceptable pro bono activity. However, I submit based on my experience, that there will be no more diversity of opinions or belief in this environment than there was 50 years ago. In many ways, there is even less. One good thing that could be said about the old establishment is that they were secure enough in their positions to take risks; many of the social reformers that made the changes of the past 50 years possible were members or children of the governing elite who were educated enough to see that changes were necessary to keep society going and then used their influence and power to work for these changes. The members of this new "diverse" governing elite do not have such security. They are so uncertain in their social status and power that security and safety are the dominant thoughts of their method of governing and of their very existence.
I do not know whether such change and the present conditions should be applauded or condemned. Unlike many, I do not have a knee-jerk reaction that any forced social acclimation is bad nor a reflexive delusion that cultural diversity is always and by definition good. Most of the social injustices and evils of this world are caused by a diversity of beliefs and ideas. Japanese culture has for centuries been very homogeneous resulting in a very peaceful environment at least among themselves if not in their contact with others. I do not believe that it should be automatically condemned that a homogeneous world in which cultural, religious, and personal beliefs are similar with little diversity is an automatic evil. It may be true that such a world would stagnate and eventually, as many such societies before have done, die before it can go out and conquer the Universe, but it is still an option since even a vibrant, diverse society will eventually, though much later, have the same end.
However, what I believe to be important is that we make the choice of a diverse or a homogeneous society based upon the reality: that whenever any type of social ideal, fad, or concept of justice or political correctness is reflected in law or legal norms, regardless of how well intentioned they are at the beginning, they will eventually become just another source of tyranny.