Social Justice Kittens is a calendar of cute kittens and social justice statements made in social media that provide food for thought about social justice. Is math inherently racist? Spend August thinking it over! The perfect gift for your politically involved friends, of whatever political stripe.

When I saw this is brought to mind a Facebook discussion of a friend of mine’s son, years ago. There was a person they knew in college who had gone to a party in black face. Apparently, this person was also a homophobe and had been a bit of a dick to one of his friends. There was some talk about putting together an online lynch mob and teaching this person a lesson of some sort. And I, being older and perhaps dumber, suggested that perhaps college was the place to do stupid shit, and enforcing our preferences through mob action is being a dick in a different way. Moreover, it wouldn’t be effective. You’d just be punishing someone, retributive “eye for an eye” justice, if there’s any justice in it at all.

His argument was, essentially, that real harm was being done by this person. Therefore, this kind of response is justified. My argument was that this is the same tactics used by homophobes to discipline society and people that don’t conform to their views. As someone who tries to think for himself, I frequently find I’m the outsider with views people don’t agree with. I’ve been on the receiving end of this kind of mob action designed to create conformity, and I didn’t like it. People should be free to have dumb opinions. Because, everyone has dumb opinions. Improvement of opinions is done incrementally, if at all, and it doesn’t tend to happen beyond the surface under the auspices of coercion. People tend to change their opinions only in the face of other people that care about them. It’s also the reason that most change requires generational replacement. Groups tend to stick to patterns of behavior over time. It’s what creates group cohesion.

Related: Rich Asshole Syndrome.