The ‘I Didn’t Make The Rules’ Fallacy
At a certain point, personal accountability needs to supplant institutional norms
Rules are said to exist for a reason. The intent, as we’re constantly lectured, is to maintain order and to teach people mutual respect. If everyone simply broke established rules whenever and however they wanted, society would fall into chaos.
But I’d argue that thoughtless rules — or unintended consequences of them — have already done a pretty bang-up job of rendering our society chaotic and hostile, as it is!
One of the latest academic trends in political correctness has been the insistence of intentionally capitalizing the word “Black” while simultaneously leaving the word “white” in all lowercase (again, consciously so), when distinguishing between racial categories.
The mental gymnastics that leftists use to justify this practice involves pointing to the fact that ancestors of present-day Black people were brought to America against their will — having their specific ethnic and cultural heritage ripped away from them.
This is in contrast to White people who — due to the voluntary immigration of our ancestors — were allowed to retain aspects of heritage from European ethnicities.
