Moral Busybodies

There are fewer than 9 hours left in 2018, and one can't help wondering where our collective path will take us in 2019. A troubling indication occured this morning, when Politico reported that members of the Bernie Sander's 2016 campaign (social justice warriors (SJWs) all) have decided that Bernie's presidential campaign just wasn't pure enough:

More than two dozen women and men who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign are seeking a meeting with the senator and his top political advisers to “discuss the issue of sexual violence and harassment on the 2016 campaign, for the purpose of planning to mitigate the issue in the upcoming presidential cycle,” according to a copy of letter obtained by POLITICO.

“In recent weeks there has been an ongoing conversation on social media, in texts, and in person, about the untenable and dangerous dynamic that developed during our campaign,” they wrote ...

"Several people who signed the letter said that their effort is not just about Sanders’ 2016 or 2020 presidential campaigns, but rather about what they called a pervasive culture of toxic masculinity in the campaign world. They stressed that they hoped their letter would not be reduced to reinforcing the “Bernie Bro” caricature, but rather would be part of a larger reckoning among people who run campaigns."

Invariably, SJWs tend to eat their own.

But they also try to destroy anyone or anything that challenges their self-perceived moral authority on any subject, whether its gender, racial , immigration, climate, economic, or business politics—to name only a few. That will be a major issue in 2019.

Coincidentally, I ran across a quote from C.S. Lewis:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

Politico's report on the "concerns" of Bernie's staffers indicates that they want Bernie's campaign to be "cured of states which we may not regard as disease" without offering any hard evidence that the "disease" exists or that true offenses were rendered. That's a form of tyranny (or bullying, if you prefer) all in the name of social justice. It's authoritarian and wrong. It's also the work of "moral busybodies" who have absolutely no monopoly on moral behavior.