The Offense Malicy

In a recent post, WM Briggs pointed out the Offense Fallacy in response to a recent incident where a British university student was expelled for quoting the Bible to argue that gay marriage is a sin. It is telling that someone like Briggs, who mostly blogs about statistics, would feel compelled to opine on the topic. He must be, like us, aghast that the nation that spawned Richard the Lion-Hearted and the world's first global empire has become so self-minimalized that Bible quotations are mortal sins requiring draconian punishments.

The Offense Fallacy is the belief that any action or statement is immoral if it offends anyone. The moral hazard is that it gives any person the power to invalidate anything another does by simply being offended, or merely by pretending to be offended, which so often seems the case. Generally speaking, feelings (fake or real) are not logical constructions. We can't logically disprove the Offense Fallacy, because it's really not an argument. Briggs provides a clear enough practical counterexample. He is offended by the ruling of the university. Therefor the ruling is immoral and must be reversed! None of this is conceptually difficult. We teach even young children that they'll never be able to please everyone. That is very similar to telling them that anything they do is liable to offend someone. If it is impossible not to offend at some point, and offense is a mortal sin, then the only moral choice is to do nothing. And the only way to really do nothing is to commit suicide. (The left, being something of a death cult already, would naturally adopt such stances.)

Briggs gives the Offense Fallacy, if anything, too much credit, for example by calling it an argument. It is not an argument at all. It is just a rule. Don't offend anyone. There's no argument. It's backed by ethos, not logos. The problem isn't that it's illogical. The problem is that, as we discussed in There Are No Rules, Only Excuses, inconsistently enforced rules are merely convenient tools for tyranny. The No Offense rule is probably the most inconsistently enforced rule out there. It's meant to be inconsistent, and enforcement is entirely identity-based. Men can't offend women. Whites can't offend "minorities". Straights can't offend gays. And so on. The trend is apparent. The rule should more correctly be stated those perceived to be strong are not permitted to offend those perceived to be weak. This is a somewhat more logically defensible rule, at least. The British student was wrong because Christianity is seen as strong and homosexuality as weak. (Yes, the rule is drowning in bigotry). And Briggs's offense at the ruling is insubstantial since he is a strong white male and the offense comes from an institution working in the interests of the weak.

The real problem is much deeper than a logical fallacy. Western society has decided that its primary goal is to root out oppression from society, yet it has also determined that the most oppressive thing on earth is western society. Liberalism is an autoimmune disease, where the body is attacked by its own immune system. The selectively enforced No Offense rule is just a means to an end. We must destroy our society to stop oppression. Unchecked egalitarianism is no less dangerous than unchecked greed. (And, if only body count is considered, it is much more dangerous.) This is the reason the alt-right doesn't tend to beat up on Muslims. Yes, they're invaders, but it's perfectly natural that they would be. Islam is like pneumonia. It's always there, always trying to kill us. It's a manageable threat until our immune system is compromised. When someone with AIDS dies from a pneumonia infection, we say they were killed by AIDS. Similarly, the west is being killed by liberalism, which is suppressing its own immune system with No Offense rules.