Some of the things I publish will irritate people. That is not an accident, but irritation is not the objective either.
The objective is consistency.
I do not let an institution, industry, political movement, nonprofit, school, government agency, corporation, or social cause off the hook merely because its original mission sounded noble. Good intentions do not eliminate incentives. They do not prevent fundraising from becoming an industry, employment from becoming a constituency, or a temporary mission from becoming a permanent institution.
We all make choices. Those choices are judged by other people, sometimes fairly and sometimes badly. We have courts for legal judgment, and we have the court of public opinion, which often exercises far more influence than it deserves.
My standard is not that every institution is equally harmful. A university is not a weapons manufacturer. A hospital is not an army. A civil-rights organization is not a technology corporation. Their purposes and consequences differ.
Their institutional behavior, however, can still follow the same mechanism.
They raise money. They protect jobs. They develop professional networks. They create educational programs and credentials. They cultivate politicians, donors, sponsors, and public support. They expand their definitions of what belongs within their mission. Eventually, people whose livelihoods depend upon the institution begin defending its continued expansion.
That is not necessarily a conspiracy.
It is how organizations survive.
The trouble begins when people condemn that mechanism in somebody else’s institution while insisting that their own cause is exempt from it. It is not. A righteous mission can still develop mission creep. A historically necessary organization can still become bloated. A movement can still expand until some of its original supporters no longer recognize what it represents.
The same consistency applies to public conduct. Adults are free to make private choices among consenting adults. That does not mean every private practice belongs in every public setting. A public event advertised as welcoming to families should maintain age-appropriate standards regardless of who is participating or what political or social cause the event represents.
That is not a special rule for one community. It is the same rule for everyone.
People may find this uncomfortable because they are accustomed to applying institutional criticism outward. They recognize self-preservation, hypocrisy, and mission creep clearly when their opponents do it. They become offended when the same measurement is used on the organizations and movements they support.
But a standard that only applies to the other side is not a standard.
Nobody gets a structural exemption.