Megan McCardle, writing in Bloomberg, penned an excellent article on "microaggressions" and the "victim culture." She bases much of her piece on a recent paper by two sociologists that described the "moral culture" that has arisen that causes people to compete  for victim status, or for the status of acting as their protectors. The two sociologists -  Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning - trace the history of our "moral culture," going back to the 16th and 17th century when we lived in an "honor culture" where slights and insults were answered personally throught duels and wars. The honor culture evolved into a "dignity culture" in the 19th and 20th century where every human being was endowed with dignity and insults or offensive actions were dealt with by the law or worked out between the two parties. Now the dignity culture has morphed into this nightmare "victim culture." McCardle...(Read Full Post)