Today, our culture is far less likely to raise up heroes than it is to exalt victims — individuals who are overcome by the sting of oppression, injustice, adversity, neglect, or misfortune. Today, it seems that those who have succumbed to their circumstances are more likely to be singled out than those who have overcome them. What caused this cultural shift from an emphasis on heroes to a preoccupation with victims?
First, our political and legal systems now actively encourage people to claim victim status and to make demands on society for reparations and recompense. The classical conception was that government and the law were meant to ensure freedom and equality of opportunity by giving people the most room possible for self-provision and self-determination.
Between the New Deal and the 1960s, a far different view began to hold sway — namely, that the role of the state was to eliminate want, suffering, and adversity. Freedom was no longer simply a right to self-provision and self- determination, but was instead a right to make demands on government and society for one’s own well-being and happiness.
No doubt, this gradual transformation in ideas took root and flourished (at least in part) because of the aggregate growth in wealth and resources we were witnessing in this country during the course of the 20th century. Against the background of this prosperity, poverty stood out in bold relief and in uncomfortably stark contrast, even as the number of people suffering from it shrank.
It is not surprising that people began to think that, in a world of seemingly unlimited resources, adversity could be eliminated or, at the very least, remedied. The ideal of the “benevolent state” took hold, one in which neglect, misfortune, and injustice did not have to be accepted as inevitable facts of life. Good government and laws could step in when necessary, as many believed they had successfully done during two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the civil-rights movement.
If one assumes that suffering and adversity can be eliminated, but sees a number of people continuing to suffer from adversity or misfortune, then there must be forces that relegate the have-nots to this fate. Or, at the very least, the less fortunate are being ignored. Those facing adversity are, therefore, victims of a society that is not doing as much as it could (if it so desired), and these victims can (and should) stake a legitimate claim against the political and legal systems for recompense. According to this view, neglect or selfishness on the part of society and government is responsible for the sting of oppression, injustice, and misfortune that the unfortunate feel today.
In light of this modern ideology, is it any surprise that people identify themselves as victims and make demands on the political system for special status and entitlements? Our culture expects (and indeed, encourages) people to do exactly that. Consider, for example, the creation and continued expansion of the welfare state and other social programs. How often have we heard proponents of these programs lull the poor into thinking that they are hopeless victims, incapable of triumphing over adversity without “benevolent intervention” by the state? How often have we heard these proponents encourage the less fortunate to become indignant about their situation in life and more demanding on the political system to find solutions to their problems?
It is not only in the political system, though, that we see our society and its leaders succumbing to the modern ideology of victimhood. As with the political system, people today are strongly encouraged to make demands on the legal system by claiming victim status. Courts are viewed as an effective means of forcing (or at least pressuring) political institutions into meeting demands for protected status and new rights or entitlements. Pointing to perceived victimization by “the system” or by others in society, our legal culture has often told the least fortunate that their last hope is to claim special legal rights and benefits, or to seek exoneration for the harmful, criminal consequences of their acts. In these ways, courts are called upon to solve social problems by creating special rules and by crafting remedies that will satisfy the claims and demands of victim groups but that do not apply to all.
There was a time when appealing to the legal system was not as easy a task as making demands on the political system. Our legal system has traditionally required that redress for grievances be granted only after very exacting standards have been met. There had to be, for example, very distinct, individualized harm. And, the definition of harm was circumscribed by a traditional understanding of adjudication under the common law, where narrow disputes regarding traditional property rights were resolved among private parties who could not settle matters on their own. Very generalized claims of misfortune or oppression or neglect — the kinds of assertions made in the political system — would not easily fit into this common mold of court activity. It would not be enough for people to be indignant, angry, and demanding about their situation in life. There would have to be an assertion of a legal wrong and a persuasive argument that a legal remedy was available.
The pressure of victimology revolutionized — and that word does not always have positive connotations — the court and the law. For those in our culture seeking to use the courts as agents of social change, poverty, unemployment, social deviancy, and criminal behavior were not just unfair conditions in our society that could be eliminated if only people or politicians cared. Instead, these abstract problems were personified as the direct result of actions of local schools, churches, businesses, and other social institutions so that they could be sued for causing individualized harm to the victims. Based on this new kind of harm — a kind of legalistic understanding of “victimage” — the courts were said to be obligated to recognize special rights and protected status under the law.
But the rise of victimhood and its perpetuation by the government and the law are only part of the mod- ern tragedy. There is also the dearth of heroes in our culture. Significantly, as the number of these “victim groups” has escalated, there has been a corresponding decline in the amount of attention paid to heroes or, even worse, a conscious attempt to cheapen their achievements. Today, success or a commitment to fighting for noble ideas is attributed to self-interest, revenge, self-aggrandizement, insecurity, or some other psychological idiosyncrasy.
Just thumb through recently published biographies in the library or bookstore. In many of them, it is not a conscious effort to be virtuous or to do good, but instead a series of unforeseeable and external forces that leads to greatness or success. And these books introduce us to the “never-before- seen” foibles, mistakes, and transgressions of people our culture idealized for centuries. The message is that these heroes are really just regular people capable of folly and vice who happened to have a few good breaks. In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville anticipated this state of affairs: “Historians who live in democratic times do not only refuse to admit that some citizens may influence the destiny of a people, but also take away from the people themselves the faculty of modifying their own lot and make them depend on an inflexible providence or a kind of blind fatality.” It should surprise no one that our culture now has far less diffculty recognizing celebrities than it does those who achieve success as a result of personal effort and character traits that we traditionally would consider heroic. Denigrating heroic virtue — in other words, chalking up heroism to circumstance — fits quite well with the notion that we must all be the same and that there can be no significant differences in our achievement, social standing, or wealth.
Anyone can see what these intellectual currents have done to the ideals of human dignity, personal responsibility, and self-determination. Preoccupation with victim status has caused people to focus covetously on what they do not have in comparison to others, or on what has happened to them in the past. Many fail to see the freedom they do have and the talents and resources that are at their disposal.
Our culture today discourages, and even at times stifles, heroic virtues — fortitude, character, courage, a sense of self-worth. For so many, the will, the spirit, and a firm sense of self-respect and selfworth have been suffocated. They do not expect the less fortunate to accept responsibility for (and overcome) their present circumstances, to succeed in savoring triumph over adversity.
But the culture of victimology — with its emphasis on the so-called ” benevolent state” — delivers an additional (and perhaps worse) blow to dignity and selfworth. When the less fortunate do accomplish something, they are often denied the sense of achievement which is so very important for strengthening and empowering the human spirit. They owe all their achievements instead to the anointed in society who supposedly changed the circumstances, not to their own efforts. Long hours, hard work, discipline, and sacrifice are all irrelevant. In a world where the less fortunate are given special treatment and benefits — and, significantly, where they are told that whatever gains or successes they have realized would not be possible without protected status and special benefits — the so-called beneficiaries of state-sponsored benevolence are denied the opportunity to derive any sense of satisfaction from their hard work and self-help. There is no one among us who views what others do for us the same way we view what we do for ourselves. No matter how much we appreciate the help, it is still just that — help, not achievement.
It also bears noting that our culture’s preoccupation with grouping victims has balkanized society. The “we/they” mentality of calling oneself a victim breeds social conflict and calls into question the moral authority of society. The idea that whole groups or classes are victims robs individuals of an independent spirit. Instead, they are just moving along with the “herd” of other victims. Such individuals also lack any incentive to be independent, because they know that as part of an oppressed group they will neither be singled out for the life choices they make, nor capable of distinguishing themselves by their own efforts.
Of course, de-emphasizing heroism exacerbates all these problems. Human beings have always faced the temptation to permit adversity or hate to dominate and destroy their lives. To counter this tendency, society had heroes — people capable of overcoming the very adversity or injustice that currently affects today’s victims. They rose above their circumstances and inherent imperfections. Heroes cherished freedom, and tried to accomplish much with what little they had. Heroes demonstrated perseverance in the face of adversity and used hardship as a means to strive for greater virtue. And heroes accepted responsibility — they did what they did despite fear and temptation, and tried to do the right thing when presented with a choice between good and evil. It is awfully hard for society to inculcate these values without some useful models from the past and present.
In idealizing heroic virtue and criticizing the victim ideology of our day, I am not saying that society is free from intractable and very saddening injustice and harm. That would be untrue. But the idea that government can be the primary instrument for the elimination of misfortune is a fundamental misunderstanding of the human condition. There have always been bad and suffering in this world, and we must admit that wrongs have been and will continue to be committed. People will always be treated unfairly. We can never eliminate oppression or adversity completely, though we can, and should, fight injustice as best we can.
But keep in mind that all of us are easily tempted to think of ourselves as victims and thereby permit adversity to be the defining feature of our lives. In so doing, we deny the very attributes that are at the core of human dignity — freedom of will, the capacity to choose between good and bad, and the ability to endure adversity and use it for gain. Victimization destroys the human spirit.
Clarence Thomas is associate justice of the Supreme Court. This article is adapted from a speech delivered in September before the Federalist Society in Washington, D.C.
