Way back in the olden thymes, conservatives in Washington would argue with liberals about the realities of Federal spending and regulation. Liberals argued that if you spent more, people had more, while conservatives would point out that the money had to come from someone, as the government had no money, other than what it taxed. Similarly, when Washington put rules on business, conservatives argued, businesses would figure out ways around them, often making things worse than if there were no regulations.

While it was all for show, there was an important truth in the critique of liberals by conservatives. Not only are there trade-offs to all government policy, but every change also sets off a series of reactions to those changes. Pass a regulation and the mere act of passing it changes the conditions you are attempting to regulate. As businesspeople will tell you, even observing or measuring something can change people’s conduct. People act differently when they are watched. Liberals have never understood this basic truth.

The “war on hate” being waged by the Left is another one of those times where their extreme simple-mindedness is undermining the alleged point of their efforts. The lawsuit against Andrew Anglin by the terrorist groups SPLC has no basis in law, but it goes forward anyway. Similarly, the lawsuit by billionaire lesbian, Roberta Kaplan, against the Unite the Right people is another effort to pervert the law. These cases are nonsense, and the lawyers should be censured. They undermine the rule of law by making it arbitrary.

That is the theme of all of the Left’s recent efforts to shut down their critics. Take a look at the women claiming to have been “sexually assaulted” by famous men. In some cases, rare cases, the facts support the charge. In most cases, the facts suggest boorish behavior common to men since the dawn of time. In other words, the very meaning of the words used to govern male-female relations are losing their meaning. Instead of appeals to reason, these cases turn on appeals to mob rule played out in the media.

You see the same thing playing out in the workplace. That poor Starbucks employee who called the cops on two troublemakers lost his job and had to worry about his safety, for following the rules. These bakery employees are also fired because they did the prudent thing and refused to open up the shop after closing. Unbeknownst to them, there was an unwritten rule regarding blacks in the store’s policies. If they had opened the store and the black had robbed the place, they would have been fired for that too.

In the quest for social justice, the Left is obliterating all of the rules, even the rules that govern the language. Instead of having objective standards like an employee handbook or the courts, the rules are arbitrary and in a state of flux. In the short term, this works for them because the final arbiters are people from the cult. Corporate elites and the legal system are brimming with Progressive loons. The normal people who are the victims have yet to figure it out, so they keep acting as if the rules still apply as written.

This is, of course, an inevitable result of proportionalism. This is where the costs of violating laws and principles are weighed against the perceived benefits from violating those laws and principles. For instance, legal discrimination is wrong as a principle, but quotas and set asides allegedly have benefits that are too valuable to pass up, so the elite demands active racism in hiring. It is the belief that the smart people in charge can extract all the benefits of taking shortcuts, without suffering any consequences for it.

This depends on everyone else not changing their behavior when the rules no longer have meaning. That is obviously not happening. The rise of white identity politics is the direct result of this growing awareness. Whites are slowly figuring out that the prohibitions against identity politics only apply to them, so they are joining the party. Steve Sailer’s famous war on noticing only works if people do not notice. Once they do, then it becomes completely counterproductive. Political correctness is now driving white identity politics.

What the Left is doing with their lurch into lawlessness is destroying the conditions that make it possible for them to dominate. The short-term benefit of having angry broads rampaging through the corporate suites has the long-term cost of undermining everyone’s respect for the rules. The same is true of lawfare projects. Their success undermines the public’s respect for the law. The Left has been able to dominate because they slyly played by one set of rules, while everyone was encouraged to play by a another set of rules.

It is funny in a way. The managerial class has embraced multiculturalism as a religion, while claiming to have advanced beyond the “rule by man” sorts of governance that have been the rule since forever. Yet, in order to make multiculturalism work, the managerial class has to transform itself into the bureaucratic elite of every empire that existed on earth. That is, in order to keep all the tribes, cults and clans from killing one another, the people in charge have to administer ad hoc rules and arbitrary justice to keep the peace.

The trouble with this is the empire had the authority of the emperor and usually an aristocratic class. Even today, it is hard not to be impressed by the image of a Roman Emperor or French monarch. When the guys making stuff up as they go along live in castles and have a retinue of cool looking knights, it is easy to go along with the arbitrariness. When the people in charge have the majesty of a postal clerk, even the lowest orders think they can do better. Ours is becoming an empire ruled by midgets.