Should We Discriminate Against Disabled People?

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But then if you start treating disabilities like they're not actually disabilities, well, then all of a sudden you lose a lot of the motivation, you know, to to put in the work or to even get the funding to try and come up with those solutions.

00:30

All right,

00:36

Tim, the question for today's episode is, should we discriminate against disabled people? I mean, obviously, yes, if their disability is causing them to be unable to perform the job that they're required to perform.

00:50

So in that sense, yes. So I mean, as defensive as it sounds, yes, like you should discriminate against a class of people called blind people by not hiring them to be your pilots.

01:05

So, sure. OK, so you're basically saying, you know, based off of their merit, there's just certain things that they cannot do, right?

01:17

That's right. I mean, it's like the idea of a disability is, you know, to be unable to perform certain tasks.

01:23

And if those tasks are required for certain jobs, then obviously you should discriminate against them as it relates to their specific disability and the tasks that you're actually required.

01:33

Now, I mean, you're not really allowed to say this. And so it feels like you're saying something wrong because we've basically adopted a bit of an irrational understanding of what discrimination actually is.

01:47

But then according to the meaning of the words and the meaning of the concepts, yes, I mean, the whole point is that we should be striving for the kind of society that is based upon ability, is based on merit, is not based on checking certain boxes along those lines.

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So now, you know, as a result of intersectionality, as a result of social justice in general, what's happened is that you're trying to fix implicit bias and things like this with reverse partiality towards particular individuals.

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And what ends up happening is that you're encouraged to lower standards of ability to give certain people jobs in order to fix historical injustices.

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And as it relates to this topic, this is just an example of how, you know, once you start down this path, you end up coming to some pretty remarkable conclusions.

02:41

And so in order to demonstrate what I'm talking about, I wanted to talk a little bit about ableism.

02:46

So a lot of this is a discussion about ableism. And so I'm just going to pull up an article about ableism real quick and just read a definition of ableism as it relates to this topic.

03:02

So the question they're asking on the article is, what is ableism? And their response is, ableism is discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities.

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So so far, that sounds bad, right? Ableism is discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities.

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And notice what it says. It says, based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. So meaning like, having sight is superior to not having sight.

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Right, right. And so this is where you have, like, our society is overly sensitive to these kind of realities.

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And based on the logic of the project, you're not even allowed to say that traditional or typical abilities are superior to disabilities.

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So I mean, you can't even really call them. It's difficult to even know what you're allowed to call them, right?

04:03

So at times, maybe you're allowed to call them disabilities if you say so in a negative way.

04:08

But then the idea is, they're trying to make a distinction between typical abilities and disabilities, right?

04:15

And then the belief is that typical abilities are superior. This is ableism.

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This is bad, right? So at its heart, ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people require fixing and defines people by their disability, like racism, sexism.

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Ableism classifies entire groups of people as less than and includes harmful stereotypes, misconceptions, generalizations of people with disabilities.

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Then this is the point. The point is that if you want to hire a pilot, then you have to be operating under real -world assumptions.

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And real -world assumptions in this scenario are that eyesight is better than non -eyesight. And this only makes sense if you're living in the world that God created, right?

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In the world that God created, eyesight was part of God's design and plan for the human race. And so because of sin, like entering into the world, then there might be certain individuals who are born without the ability to have sight.

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But that doesn't mean that you take the entirety of society and gear it around like a problem, right?

05:25

So a lack of eyesight, biblically speaking, is a problem that needs to be overcome, and it will be one day overcome in the eschaton, right?

05:33

So this is a problem. God designed human beings with eyes. Having eyes that do not work, objectively, that's a problem that needs to be resolved.

05:45

And it's going to limit a substantial part of what it even means to be human in this life, right?

05:51

So what you don't do is you don't create an entire world that's going to... In the guise of egalitarianism, everyone has to be equal.

06:01

What you don't do is take a least common denominator approach to what it means to be human, and then force everyone to live in a world that caters to disabilities in this way.

06:12

Does that make sense? Yeah, I guess I just want to know why you're basically saying that these people are subhuman.

06:25

You're obviously saying that they're subhuman, that they don't deserve to even breathe the air that they breathe.

06:34

I mean, it's so obvious, Tim, that it's... I just want to know where you get that justification.

06:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have essential features of humanity, and one of those essential features is not eyesight, but then that's a normal feature of what it means to be human.

06:53

It's like, so God's designed the human race to have two arms, right? Despite the fact that a person might have a cord wrapped around their arm and be born with one arm.

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So you think about God's general human design. God's general human design is for human beings to be able to see, to be able to hear, to be able to smell, to be able to touch, to be able to taste, right?

07:14

So this is God's design. And then when there are individuals who are born with those normal components of what it means to be human, not operational in certain ways, but then 99 .9

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% of people have all five senses, right? They have touch, sight, taste, hearing, smell, and all of it, right?

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So the issue, though, is these are disabilities. You're missing out on a significant, like as I say, you're missing out on a significant feature of what human life is like for the vast majority of people alive.

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And there's no amount of like, we can try to pretend for you that you're not, right, in order to make you feel better, but that doesn't actually help anyone because everyone who's blind knows that they're missing out on this significant feature of what it means to be human in that way.

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They're missing out on something. So now we can be sentimental about it, or we can operate in the real world and say, yes, it is actually a trial that you're going to have to bear and God has given you to bear.

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But then what's happening, though, with the social justice world, the ableism kind of discussion and the egalitarian assumptions that are undergirding it is that everyone has to be the same.

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And so what that means is that if I have eyes at work and I engage in activities that are required for eyesight, that somehow

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I'm robbing this other person of something because I'm enjoying something that they're not able to enjoy.

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And so in that way, if you follow the logic of this project and you're not allowed to discriminate on these people and you're not allowed to even say that traditional abilities are better than disabilities in that way, we have to pretend like they're just a different strength set or something and then gear the world in such a way that everyone's the same, then what you end up doing is you end up taking away everything that it means to be human.

09:16

Right. Because there's always someone who's disabled who isn't going to be able to enjoy the things you're enjoying. So this is like a system set up based on envy.

09:23

And that's the problem with it. It's based on envy. Envy is the oil in the engine that keeps this thing going, where I don't have to feel bad if I watch a

09:35

TV show because there's a blind person who can't enjoy a TV show. I don't have to. In me, having a

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TV isn't an act of ableism to where I'm shaming this person who can't enjoy a

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TV. God's given people different gifts. Some people he's given a certain set of trials.

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And as it relates to this topic of discrimination, what you need is you need to have people who are able to do the task that you need them to do and pay them to do it.

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And what's happening, though, is that you have, with the logic of this project, you have all along the intersectional hierarchy, you have the race discussion, you have the sexual deviancy kind of discussion, you have the gender discussion.

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And with the ableism kind of discussion, this is kind of the ultimate victim card that you can play where you can make the entire world cater around your disability, even in order for everything to be fair.

10:37

And as Christians, you just have to reject that. That's just not the way that life works. So are you saying, when it comes to a disabled person, are we not supposed to help them in any way?

10:49

I mean, how far does this go? Yeah, well, I mean, I don't want to help a blind person be a pilot.

10:58

Right. You get what I'm saying? In that way, there's more people to love than the disabled person.

11:08

And you can see this at sporting events and things like that, to where they'll let the mentally handicapped person come in.

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And on the rare occasion, the mentally handicapped person will actually perform a good play or something like that, right?

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But then if you think about the way this actually works, you have a game that's being played that's based on skill, that's based on ability, right?

11:38

And you put a person in who doesn't have ability and doesn't have the same kind of skill, then what you're doing is you're forcing everyone to engage in kind of a lie, right?

11:48

In order to make that person feel better, right? So everyone just stops playing because they don't know what to do, because they know that it's not like we all have to engage and pretend in order to make this person feel okay.

12:01

So in a certain way, what's happening there is everyone's just engaging in a lie for the purpose of that individual and violating the entire structure of the way the game is supposed to work, right?

12:16

And so we do this, and everyone praises that when things like that happen. But then if you're the player, when that thing is happening, you're like,

12:23

I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here, right? You're just like, I'm not going to try. Please don't do this at the state championship at the last moment.

12:34

Force us all to have a diversity, equity, inclusion moment, please, because all you're doing is you're sabotaging the way the world works.

12:44

And so I think there's a real sense in which what you want to do as a

12:49

Christian person is you want to help out a disabled person by giving them something that they can do, right?

12:56

And giving them something that they can productively do. So yeah, I mean, there may be jobs that you can give a blind person, and you may go out of your way to try to give them a job to do that they can legitimately do, right?

13:10

But what you don't want to do is give them a job they can't do. And that's part of the problem with the social justice project is that in the name of inclusion and in the name of diversity, there's this demand that you put people in jobs that they can't do.

13:23

And then when you do that, everyone suffers, right? So you don't want the blind guy building your buildings. Like, you don't want them to be the architect, okay?

13:31

Like, you don't. There are certain abilities that you need in order to do this well that you don't have.

13:39

And we can't just give you a normal salary in order to accomplish a task you're unequipped for.

13:46

And so what we need is we need across the board, we need people being put in positions that they're able to fulfill, right?

13:53

And looking for opportunities to get people in positions they're able to fulfill, not just lowering the standards.

13:58

Because if you do this, like, this is just a dramatic example of what would happen. Like, if you follow the logic of the egalitarian project to its end, you're going to be putting a bunch of people into situations where they're fundamentally unable to do the job.

14:11

And like, all you're doing is stealing from people, right? You're just stealing from people, you know? You've got to hire four blind people at your job.

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It's like, I don't have jobs for them, you know? So then basically, you're just giving them money to have a position that they can't fulfill.

14:26

And all that does is build resentment. And it's theft, right? It shouldn't be done in a heavy -handed way along those lines.

14:32

And I could see, you know, in a world where you take that to its logical conclusion, I could see an outcome where, you know, you basically, like, right now you have scientists who are trying to find solutions to a lot of these disabilities, right?

14:49

So, for the person who loses a hand, they're trying to find ways to, you know, give them a hand back, right?

14:55

Through some sort of, like, you know, like, robotic Anakin hand or something. Right. But then it's the same thing for, like, sight and for hearing.

15:06

And, you know, I don't know if we'll ever find solutions that can truly, like, overcome all of these disabilities.

15:15

But it's at least encouraging to see that there's some progress seemingly made on these things.

15:20

But then if you start treating disabilities like they're not actually disabilities, well, then all of a sudden you lose a lot of the motivation, you know, to put in the work or to even get the funding to try and come up with those solutions, right?

15:38

And so you're also hurting, you're kind of hurting those people when you think about it that way,

15:46

I guess. Yeah. Now, I mean, imagine you're in a scenario where, like, you know, the guy gets a robotic arm.

15:55

He's lost his arm. He's got a robotic arm. And now you can restore dignity as an employer by hiring him.

16:00

And let's say that he can only perform 80 % of the job. You know, he can't, like, he can only perform up to 80 % of the job as a normal person.

16:07

Well, I mean, as an employer, you ought to have the ability and the right to show generosity towards him and give him a full salary, right?

16:17

And not an 80 % salary just out of the kindness and generosity of your heart.

16:22

Now, what's happening is, like, with the discrimination laws is that you're being forced to, you know, show generosity.

16:30

And when you're being forced to show generosity and charity, that's theft. Okay. Sure. That's someone forcing you to, like, to hire someone who might be less productive.

16:40

Right. So I think, like, generosity is a good thing.

16:46

It shouldn't be, like, mandated by the government. And I don't think that people should be discriminating against a disabled person who can legitimate, like, just because they have some disability or something like that.

16:58

Right. So, like, if you can name any disability, I'm not going to hire you just because you have a disability.

17:04

Like, meaning, like, let's say that you have no sense of taste. Well, you can still fly a plane or something.

17:10

Right. Like, and that's what people hear when you say, should you discriminate against disabled people?

17:16

It's like that kind of thing. Right. It's like, well, that's literally, like, I don't like the issue is, is their disability preventing them from, you know, performing the function that they need to?

17:27

And if so, yes, absolutely. Right. As a class of people, you should discriminate against blind people for pilot jobs as a class.

17:36

Right. Yes. Yeah. But then, you know, I think, you know, as an employer at your own, you know, judgment, not being coerced by anyone on the outside, if you want to take a person who, take on a person who's going to be a lot more work in order to restore dignity to them and to give them an opportunity, you should, you should be free to do that.

18:00

Whatever you want to do with your own money as an act of generosity at that point. But it shouldn't be compelled with a heavy hand by the government.

18:06

And you shouldn't be forced to pretend like, like this is an equal, you know, job that you're giving in that way.

18:15

Okay. If that makes sense. Fair enough. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

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18:36

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