PrintNovember 23, 2008
Race in the Third Millennium
Although the show was propaganda produced by leftist Norman Lear, no one could accuse "All in the Family" of not being funny. Its protagonist, blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker, is one of those legendary television characters, and one of his uproarious lines is apropos here. It was uttered during a scene in which his daughter, Gloria, passionately asked him, "Daddy, did you know that 65 percent of the people murdered in the last ten years were killed by handguns?" The curmudgeonly patriarch's reply was classic: "Would it make you feel any better, little girl, if they was pushed outta' windas'?"
While what follows isn't the conclusion Lear wanted us to draw, the truth is that many Americans would feel better. People tend to fixate on the boogeyman of their ideology, and they often don't trouble much about evil when it's not committed in his name.
We see examples of this phenomenon today, and this brings me to a couple of questions of my own. Can tyranny be visited in the name of only one particular lie? And would it make you feel any better if millions were oppressed or murdered to promote a fashionable lie? The truth is, sadly, millions would feel better.
Archie's characteristic fault, bigotry, is today a very unfashionable lie. It's also a very exaggerated one. Up until just recently, millions of Americans were absolutely certain a black man could never be elected president. I had pointed out on numerous occasions, both at private gatherings and in print (here, here and here, for instance), that America is the least "racist" country on Earth and that a black person could very easily ascend to the White House. So, before we proceed, let's make something crystal clear.
I and my philosophical soul mates were right, and the other side was wrong.
Very wrong.
Completely, irrefutably, unambiguously wrong.
How they could be so wrong? The answer is, they're in the grip of a false ideology that is emotionally pleasing to them. And the cool regions of the head are easily trumped by the raging fires of the heart.
People have always been raised with certain dogmas. In our time, the "three r's" of education are revisionism, relativism, and racism, and we are instilled with the notion that the last one is the end-all and be-all, the source of all our woes. In fact, the modern version of that old biblical admonition would have to be "Racism is the root of all evil."
This is evident in our culture. In textbooks and documentaries we are bombarded with gratuitous treatments of slavery and discrimination in America (not elsewhere, where the former is extant and the latter generally far worse), and the media report every detectable bigoted word uttered or racial act committed by white people, no matter how statistically rare it might be, for the purposes of portraying our nation as ridden with racism and in need of "the fix" (this is partially why we've been fixed like a dog).
Then there is the matter of how communism is viewed kindly relative to National Socialism (which partially explains why "big C" communism is again on the rise). We are outraged that 11 million were killed because of a racial agenda, as we should be, yet it seems that it would make modern man's inner little girl feel better if they had been exterminated in the name of an atheistic/economic one. After all, while the communists killed about ten times as many -- 100 million worldwide during the 20th century -- its defenders are never lowered to where they belong, the nadir of pariah status occupied by a neo-Nazi. But, of course, godlessness and economic egalitarianism are all the rage in these enlightened times.
Then there is the matter of how communism is viewed kindly relative to National Socialism (which partially explains why "big C" communism is again on the rise). We are outraged that 11 million were killed because of a racial agenda, as we should be, yet it seems that it would make modern man's inner little girl feel better if they had been exterminated in the name of an atheistic/economic one. After all, while the communists killed about ten times as many -- 100 million worldwide during the 20th century -- its defenders are never lowered to where they belong, the nadir of pariah status occupied by a neo-Nazi. But, of course, godlessness and economic egalitarianism are all the rage in these enlightened times.
Many will justify such bias, claiming that the demon of discrimination cannot be exorcised without constant prayer to the god of government; there must be a bit of over-compensation in much that same way that a crooked wire cannot be made right unless it's bent beyond straight in the other direction. But it is also true that if you keep bending it in the fashionable direction, it becomes more crooked than it was before. The yoke of tyranny isn't less burdensome just because it's born of an unfashionable lie's opposite.
This is why it's so dangerous when we deceive ourselves about a problem. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis' in The Screwtape Letters, the demon bent on civilization's demise reasons that he must convince people to exaggerate their faults. Thus, we dark angels must tell the militarist that he is too pacifistic and the pacifist that he is too militaristic. In light of this, consider that certain forces in our thoroughly politically-correct society, where cultural affirmative action carries the day, continually tell us that we're too racist.
When you understand this phenomenon whereby man swings from one extreme to the other and consider what we regard to be our greatest mistakes of the past, it becomes clear why we are in our current social state and what dangers may lie on the horizon. I will elaborate.
Barack Obama's infamous ex-pastor, friend and confidant, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, subscribes to "Black Liberation Theology." He expressed one of its tenets during a fiery sermon, saying:
"Jesus was a poor black man who lived in a country and who lived in a culture that was controlled by rich white people."
Such rhetoric is tolerated by much of society. But not by those, such as authentic Christians, who understand that Jesus should not be reduced to a racial symbol. After all, such a characterization is as ridiculous as claiming Jesus was a member of the Nordic race and did battle with Jews.
Oh, by the way, the latter was claimed -- by the National Socialists -- in 1930s Germany. It was called "positive Christianity," and it was tolerated by much of society. But not by people, such as authentic Christians, who understood that Jesus should not be reduced to a racial symbol.
As for citizens who disagreed with National Socialist doctrine, they were often silenced; I suppose it was very unfashionable to claim that your Aryan race didn't enjoy superiority. We have risen beyond this today, of course. So much so, in fact, that we have speech codes in colleges and corporations and hate-speech laws in many countries which ensure that people who disagree with the doctrine of complete racial equivalency along every conceivable dimension will often be silenced. It's a totally different thing.
The National Socialists (and many others) were wrong not just because they believed in differences among groups that didn't exist, but, far more significantly, because they also assumed that a group's worth was determined by its characteristic abilities and overall intelligence. They didn't understand that everyone is deserving of dignity because he is a child of God; this is an easy mistake to make when your ideology becomes your god and its tenets your truth.
And something happens when your agenda and its truth supplant God, the Truth. When its tenets conflict with the Truth, instead of discarding the former, you rationalize away the latter. Thus, when fleet-footed Jesse Owens prevailed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and Joe Louis pummeled German Max Schmeling in their second heavyweight bout, it did nothing to disabuse the National Socialists of their ideas. The doctrine that they occupied the highest rung of a racial hierarchy determined by genetics could not be questioned.
We're not like that at all. Instead, we're diligent enough to ostracize people such as Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder and renowned scientists William Shockley and James Watson for suggesting that some group differences could have a genetic basis. The doctrine of comprehensive absolute genetic racial equivalency cannot be questioned.
In reality, the balanced view of the matter is very simple: While there are differences among groups, there are also differences within groups. The latter is why we must judge everyone as an individual, and the former is why we must judge every individual group as an individual group.
The National Socialists had a problem with this, as they were bent on believing that a person's group identity is destiny; it was a doctrine that justified discrimination. We're not like that at all. We insist that a group's group identity is meaningless. Ashkenazi Jews have the highest I.Q. of any group, blacks tolerate heat better and tend to be more muscular, and I'm sure every group possesses genetically-based advantages of some kind. Yet this mustn't be acknowledged, as it contradicts our doctrine that performance differences among groups must be attributed to discrimination.
The National Socialists were also gung-ho nationalistic; it helped greatly to rally Josef Six-pack. We're not like that at all. In fact, we go so far as to criticize flag-wavers and, as Bill Ayers and Ward Churchill can attest, preach anti-Americanism in academia, the media and Hollywood. We have moved beyond tribal loyalties. We are internationalists.
Yes, we are nothing like those racial dogmatists of bygone days. We can truthfully say, as writer Ace Walker once pointed out, "We're not National Socialists, you bloody fool. We're international socialists!"
Another characteristic of the National Socialists is that before they gained the power to impose their agenda through the law, they did so through the lawless; they used brown-shirted thugs to intimidate and silence opposition.
We're not like that at all.
Our mobs don't wear brown shirts. They just storm stages (Columbia and other attacks on traditionalists at colleges), intimidate voters, steal conservative newspapers, attack conservative students and vandalize their homes, and force-feed students politically-correct ideas in academia.
Then there are the aspirations, which are sometimes expressed by readers of left-wing news sites. For instance, at a very popular site I came across a post to the effect of (I'm paraphrasing):
Racists should be beaten and then put in re-education camps until their thinking is changed.
This was not an uncommon sentiment at this site and was unchallenged by the other respondents.
To place this in perspective, remember that things such as condemning Islamist beliefs, speaking frankly about crime statistics, criticizing Obama and even opposing welfare have been labeled racist. Why, even Bill Clinton, the former and now completely white "first black president," was labeled a racist during the primary campaign. "Racist" has become synonymous with "bad guy," and bad guy has come to mean "someone who disagrees with our doctrine." And, you see, the remedy for doctrinal incorrectness is a re-education camp.
So we exhibit that dreaded pattern, that tendency to go from one extreme to another. No matter how far we bend that wire, we're continually told we're too racist. We're ever on the watch for closet National Socialists, inheritors of a philosophy whose adherents murdered millions under the banner of racial superiority. But what will be the result of an ever-intensifying obsession to enforce a racial-equivalency doctrine whose adherents see enemies around every corner?
Well, whatever. I'm sure modern man's inner little girl will feel better as long as people are only pushed out of windows.
