The liberal anti-discriminatory principle carried to its logical conclusion

In another entry, a reader informs us of France’s 1990 Gayssot Act or Gayssot Law, which states:

[A]any discrimination founded on membership or non-membership [in] an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a religion is prohibited.

As I have always said, the most important aspect of modern liberalism, in terms of both its sacredness to liberals and the effects of liberalism on society, is the demand that all discrimination be eliminated. And here we have a law which in principle does precisely that. Furthermore, under this non-discriminatory mandate, all traditional natural and social groupings of human beings must be abolished, because they all, by their very nature, discriminate. If members of a nation cannot make discriminations between citizens of the nation and foreigners, then the nation has been abolished. If members of a religion cannot make discriminations between adherents and non-adherents of that religion, then religion has been abolished. The Gayssot Act has not yet been applied with full consistency across the board. But in terms of its stated principle it is pure liberalism, and pure totalitarianism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 12, 2012 11:04 AM | Send