The Endagered Victims Act - A Proposal

You know, maybe I should learn to stop worrying and love the Endangered Species Act. Actually, I hate the Endangered Species Act. It tramples Fifth Amendment property rights protections and imposes irrational and disproportionate economic hardship. Honestly, what thinking person really believes that we should forbid farming on the Palouse because of an earthworm?
But I think that as bad as it is, the processes behind the Endangered Species Act might be one heck of a lot better than the way we do some things now. This past week’s delisting of the wolf as an endangered species and the completely predictable lawsuit challenging the delisting gave me a great idea. Why can’t we apply this process to other government impositions on our lives?
I am thinking that we might profit from an Endangered Victims Act. It would be quite easy to make the case that approximately three quarters of the American public qualifies as a victim of racial, sexual, cultural or economic oppression. About the only people who are not catered to in some way or another as helpless victims are white, heterosexual, self-sufficient males. They serve the roll of the oppressors. And it is that shrinking percentage of the population whom politicians vow to get even with on behalf of the victims.
I would like to propose that we take granting victimhood status out of the hands of ambitious politicians trying to buy votes and put it in the charge of unaccountable bureaucrats, just as we do with endangered species.
In place of the current system helter-skelter, opportunistic granting of victim status to whomever is fashionably oppressed at the moment, and might cast a swing vote in the next election, victim groups or their advocates should have to make the case for victimhood before a board of disinterested experts who would weigh the arguments against established principles. Right now, all a politician has to do is convince some demographic group that their circumstances would be dramatically improved if only they weren’t being kept down by “the man.” In my system, the demographic petitioning for victims status would have to demonstrate real hardship, specify who it is that’s keeping them down, and explain how the oppressor is inflicting this oppression.
As it now stands, politicians can transfer rights or powers from one group of people to another in the form of preferential treatment based upon race or sex or using wealth redistribution schemes. Politicians are hardly disinterested or expert. They make their decisions based upon the likelihood that the newly anointed “victims” will reward them in the next election cycle. That’s a system that begs for corruption. And that begging is rarely denied.
In addition, remedies for oppression would have to be reviewed for efficacy, just as endangered species remediation efforts are evaluated to determine if they actually work or not. Snake River sockeye salmon advocates are constantly suing or appealing remedies for restoring fish populations. Wouldn’t it be something if victims’ advocates had to prove genuine victimhood and demonstrate that their solutions actually worked? We’ve had racial preferences in education for a long, long time and there is little evidence that it actually remedies anything. In fact, there is considerable evidence that such preferences actually harm those whom they are supposed to assist.
But, the real benefit of treating victims in a manner similar to endangered species would be that someday, a victim group would find itself delisted as a victim. Politicians would like all of us to consider ourselves as victims, incapable of surviving in this world without their beneficence. And the politicians will never withdraw the preferential treatment they bestow upon faithful constituencies, regardless of the economic or social progress made.
Victims groups are like corn farmers. Once addicted to government succor, they can never give it up voluntarily. And politicians who have grown addicted to the votes will never muster the moral courage to withdraw it. Only unaccountable bureaucrats whose jobs do not rely upon passing out favors can do that.
It’s not as though there is no precedent. If not for the Base Closure Commission, we would have scores of unnecessary military bases simply because Congress could never marshal the courage to do the right thing themselves.
Legislative bodies should confess their limitations. Where they lack wisdom, honesty or courage, create bureaucracies to do the right thing.