The Volokh Conspiracy

It actually strikes me as a pretty crummy article; what little "evidence" he has to support his case is Horowitz's "Student Bill of Rights," which he has to distort to make his point.

There are a lot of problems in the Right right now, but neither orthodoxy nor beaucratic orthodoxy are among them.

I don't think anybody complains about true victims claiming it. What the right has picked up on is automatically playing the victim card, before the evidence for victimhood accumulates. A fair number of whites are extremely quick to allege reverse racism, before it's proved. Seems like the victim card is the first one to be played, by both sides.

Another amusing/sickening aspect of it is the disconnect between the Malkins and Limbaughs of the world, and the constant calls for civility from the left. It has been an effective rhetorical technique - claim the screechers are just comedy while Serious People Who Wish To Engage shut down conversation from competitors by calling for Reasoned Discourse. The effect is that people who want to talk are shouted down from the peanut gallery (which, in fact, is not the proles, but a cultivated group of media personalities), and then told to grow up when they make themselves heard. As a systemic exploit, I applaud; morally, it is awful. (I'm a technical person with a security background, sorry if my framing seems strange.)

There's an interesting aside to this sort of discussion going on with Tacitus re: the "Overton Window" - an analytical device for strategic political thinking. No matter what your persuasion, it is interesting. Though some of my sympathies lie with Digby, I think s/he (who knows?) is wrong. More lefty thoughts here.

I prefer to call the phenomenon the Victimology Olympics. Part of me has hoped that as the Right learns to compete for Most Victimized Group - as other commentators have mentioned, see the 'war on christmas' for a great example - Lefty Victimologists would finally understand how rotten the underlying logic to victimism is. So far, umm, no.

"Nuestro Himno" ia an anthem for the pro-illegal-alien movement. That's what earns most of the outrage against it.

Angus. Wrong twice. She didn't praise it. She put it in the context of the times, something we are often commended to do. And she straightened out some of the lies told about it.
And she didn't call for anybody else to be rounded up.

Who on earth do you think is dumb enough to believe you?

A lot of the examples Walker cites are not cases of victimization, but a refusal to put up with or abide by double standards.

Racism is a bad thing. Racism is morally wrong. If you want to call someone a n****r, it doesn't become OK just because you're throwing the word at Condi Rice and not Jesse Jackson.

Plagiarism is a bad thing. As soon as it was found out that Jayson Blair did it, he got canned, and I supported that. As soon as it was clear that Ben Domenech did it, he got canned, and I supported that too. (Note too that there is a little thing called "evidence" which is required.) No one gets an exception on account of whosever side they are.

But then there are a few examples that simply don't matter. Conservatives tend to be as offended by posters of Che Guevara just as liberals are offended by Confederate flags. They are both symbols of well-intentioned causes that caused a lot of pain and suffering, and their display demonstrates a willful ignorance of history. But with some things, it's probably better as a matter of communal peace and comity to just let it slide.

In any given situation, either apply the rules to everyone equally, or don't apply them at all. That's all conservatives are asking for. Plus, it has the advantage of forcing those imposing the codes to take a dose of their own medicine. To paraphrase Ulysses S. Grant, there is no better way to get a bad rule repealed than applying it strictly to everyone.