I’ve been reading essays here and there from Steve Sailer’s anthology Noticing. In “Jews and Noblesse Oblige“, I came across this insight I thought worth highlighting:
For noblesse oblige to work, privileged and influential groups have to be publicly acknowledged to be privileged and influential. If, on the other hand, their main sense of collective identity is that of marginal members of society endangered by the might of the current majority, then the system doesn’t operate. (p. 321)
In another article from his collection (“The Myth of the Golf Nazi”), he notes humorously:
For most of history, being a hereditary aristocrat was a good job. The only catch was the old concept of noblesse oblige, which suggested that people of wealth, power, and influence were honor bound to defend the general public.
Today, however, it’s more prestigious to be a victim of the majority. That seems to release you from any nagging worries about aristocratic responsibility.
Being an actual victim, though, is still no fun. So the best thing is to be recognized as a member of a hereditary victimocracy. … (p. 329)
Indeed. Being a member of an official designated victim class means never having to say you’re sorry. Victim status bestows power without any attendant responsibility. A nice gig if you can get it. What explains this bizarre elevation of victimhood to the highest-status rank in our society?
The key to understanding this phenomenon is the central role that the oppressor-oppressed script plays in contemporary liberalism. Equality is the second principle of liberalism: but the fact that inequality remains among different groups—despite massive efforts by the left to eradicate it—implies that the dominant majority must be oppressing the less-accomplished groups and thwarting their bid for equality. The solution is to promote and advance the interests of the oppressed groups and to oppose and attack the dominant oppressor group until equality is achieved.
Of course, Occam’s razor might hint at a different cause of inequality: that men differ in natural abilities. While this hypothesis does not formally contradict the principles of liberalism, it suggests to the liberal cast of mind that some groups might be naturally better suited to rule over other groups, and this would appear to vitiate liberalism’s proscription against ‘accidents of birth’ serving as criteria for one man’s rule over another. And what can that mean other than that the hypothetically ruled groups are inferior? And that, for the modern liberal, is basically Nazism. And so we end up with the present state of affairs: a hypothesis that is not merely strongly resisted, but verboten and a thoughtcrime.
Speaking of the Jews and noblesse oblige, I’m reminded of an article from nearly a decade ago by Peter Beinart in The Forward (of all places): Beinart demonstrates a recognition of the problems besetting suffering white communities and rather than mock them for it and say they “deserve to die” (as one former National Review hack infamously put it), advocates adopting a sense of noblesse oblige on the part of elite Jews toward dysfunctional white communities rather than toward exclusively token ‘victimized’ classes: a recognition that as Jews who occupy the elite echelons of society, they have a special responsibility to society. There is also a sense of wanting whites to flourish rather than viewing them as the source of all of society’s ills. It even recognizes the importance of Christianity to forming functional families and communities. But I also remember thinking the article atypical.
This sort of sentiment should form a part of the attitude the elites ought to take toward the lower classes.
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