The Group Rights Fallacy

"They called him brother? That's just embarrassing," said Charles Barron, a black New York City councilman who is making his own bid for Congress in a neighboring Brooklyn district.

"People keep saying David has the right to run. Well, we should be talking about group rights, not individual rights. Black people who have been oppressed and repressed, we can take care of ourselves. We don't need him to take care of us," Barron said.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

If your fundamental unit of moral calculation is The Group rather than The Individual, you will ultimately value the group over the individual. This is the moral calculation of tyrants, dictators, and authoritarians. You don't matter in the final account, only the "wills" of the groups to which you belong.

Nevermind the pragmatic problem of defining just exactly what constitutes "the group." The entire concept is incoherent.

Posted by Drizzten at July 24, 2006 11:19 PM