Dehumanization is the Order of the Day

June 9, 2018 Robert Higgs

The Nazis had their Untermenschen. Contemporary Republicans have their illegal immigrants. Contemporary progressives have their gun owners and users. Contemporary conservatives have their drug users and traffickers.

Everyone, it seems, has identified the members of certain groups as not people, but animals. Thus, dehumanization is the order of the day.

Pretty soon so many will have been dehumanized that the remaining three human beings will be able to sit down together and work out their differences peacefully without bringing down a hail of official force and violence.

Written by Robert Higgs

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and Editor at Large of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.