I just wanted to alert everyone that Rick Darby over at Reflecting Light has a great piece on Political Correctness, called Political Correctness must die. Rick, as always, has his own unique perspective to offer. Well worth a visit.
And while we're on the subject, there is this link to a piece called The Absurdities of Multiculturalism, which should have been appended to my initial blog entry. It's a lengthy piece, and might be worth bookmarking and reading in installments.
I hope this discussion on PC will be picked up by other like-minded bloggers; in some ways it's a radioactive subject but it's one that has to be brought out into the light of day. Rick's contribution is a good place to pick up the thread.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Where are the Arabs?
I have to take a break from some of the controversial subjects of the last few days, so how about a repeat of a corny joke you have probably all heard, in some form:
The Saudi Ambassador to the UN has just finished giving a speech, and walks out into the lobby where he meets his American counterpart. They shake hands and as they walk the Saudi says, "You know, I have just one question about what I have seen in America."
The American says "Well your Excellency, anything I can do to help you I will do."
The Saudi whispers "My son watches this show 'Star Trek' and in it there are Russians and Blacks and Asians, but never any Arabs. He is very upset. He doesn't understand why there are never any Arabs in Star Trek."
The American laughs and leans over and says, "That's because it takes place in the future."
This is all by way of an intro to the Star Trek weekend they have been having at NRO, of all places.
James Lileks has one of the better entries, of those I've read, at least, called A Conservative Trek.
I confess to having been a Star Trek fan -- that is, of the original series, not the later counterfeits of the same name. Like James Lileks, however, I was never a 'Trekkie' or even a 'Trekker' as some of the really serious fans insisted on calling themselves. I never went to a Star Trek convention or any sci-fi 'con' although I knew people who did.
In recent years, though, since I've returned to my conservative roots, to the traditional values under which we were all brought up back when, Trek has lost whatever luster it had in my eyes, mainly because I have become uncomfortably aware of the agenda being pushed in many of the Trek episodes. Nowadays, we see a leftist/multiculturalist agenda being pushed relentlessly in all our entertainment, but back in the late 60s, that trend was just beginning. Back then, there was entertainment that was actually not propaganda, but mere silly diversion and fun. But much of Star Trek, seen through the eyes of an awakened conservative, seems clumsily preachy, embarrassingly so. The 'one world' agenda: back when I was a teen, when this series first appeared, I thought, as most idealistic youngsters would, 'oh, wow, cool, we will all be one world where everybody gets along and works together!' As an adult, I see the folly of that, the impracticability.
And then the feminist agenda: women in space, as the equals of men! Or sort of equals; the original pilot episode had a female second-in-command, played by a dark-haired Majel Barrett; she was rather no-nonsense, not at all the miniskirted cutie like most of the female crew members in the later series.
And Star Trek was an early advocate of 'multiculturalism' or at least pluralism; one of each was represented in the crew. Of course the later spinoff series were much farther gone down that road: not only multiple nationalities of earthlings, but aliens galore. That's real multiracialism; why be 'species-ist'?
But as Lileks says in his entertaining piece,
I have to say I've noticed that, too; a number of the Trek episodes had very conservative messages. I guess society hadn't attained to the present level of liberal 'enlightenment.' In a number of episodes, Kirk argued for the necessity of aggression and force in fighting evil. Another episode with a perhaps inadvertently conservative message was 'The Enemy Within', in which Kirk, split into two 'selves' via a transporter malfunction, had to fight his evil self, while his 'good' self proved ineffectual to do so. It was acknowledged that the aggressive, violent side had to be integrated with the good, though weak side in order for him to be an effective leader. Our society needs that lesson right now.
Lileks also mentions episodes like 'Errand of Mercy' in which Kirk tries to rally the seemingly passive people of a planet against the marauding Klingons, but the people have 'evolved beyond' aggression and in fact evolved beyond those troublesome physical bodies. That sounds like a liberal fantasy.
And then Lileks mentions the episode 'City on the Edge of Forever', written by Harlan Ellison, in which Kirk has to let his sweetie die so she won't found a pacifist movement. When I was young, I thought his letting her walk out in front of a car was tragic and wrong, but now I'm less sure.
The multicultural agenda of the original Trek used to bother me as I became conservative, but now that I think about it, it actually gives us cause for hope. Here's why: if today's multiculturalists are successful, there would not be any separate races or nationalities in the 23rd century. We would, if their plans succeed, be all one homogeneous group of people: no Russians, no Americans, no Scotsmen, no Swahili-speaking Africans, no Irishmen. Just Earthlings. But since all these people exist in the Star Trek future -- minus the Arabs -- maybe we and our cultures will forestall this Tower of Babel disaster that is being engineered.
And if the Arabs aren't a part of The Federation, maybe that's a sign that separationism will have succeeded.
We can hope. That's the message of Star Trek.
The Saudi Ambassador to the UN has just finished giving a speech, and walks out into the lobby where he meets his American counterpart. They shake hands and as they walk the Saudi says, "You know, I have just one question about what I have seen in America."
The American says "Well your Excellency, anything I can do to help you I will do."
The Saudi whispers "My son watches this show 'Star Trek' and in it there are Russians and Blacks and Asians, but never any Arabs. He is very upset. He doesn't understand why there are never any Arabs in Star Trek."
The American laughs and leans over and says, "That's because it takes place in the future."
This is all by way of an intro to the Star Trek weekend they have been having at NRO, of all places.
James Lileks has one of the better entries, of those I've read, at least, called A Conservative Trek.
I confess to having been a Star Trek fan -- that is, of the original series, not the later counterfeits of the same name. Like James Lileks, however, I was never a 'Trekkie' or even a 'Trekker' as some of the really serious fans insisted on calling themselves. I never went to a Star Trek convention or any sci-fi 'con' although I knew people who did.
In recent years, though, since I've returned to my conservative roots, to the traditional values under which we were all brought up back when, Trek has lost whatever luster it had in my eyes, mainly because I have become uncomfortably aware of the agenda being pushed in many of the Trek episodes. Nowadays, we see a leftist/multiculturalist agenda being pushed relentlessly in all our entertainment, but back in the late 60s, that trend was just beginning. Back then, there was entertainment that was actually not propaganda, but mere silly diversion and fun. But much of Star Trek, seen through the eyes of an awakened conservative, seems clumsily preachy, embarrassingly so. The 'one world' agenda: back when I was a teen, when this series first appeared, I thought, as most idealistic youngsters would, 'oh, wow, cool, we will all be one world where everybody gets along and works together!' As an adult, I see the folly of that, the impracticability.
And then the feminist agenda: women in space, as the equals of men! Or sort of equals; the original pilot episode had a female second-in-command, played by a dark-haired Majel Barrett; she was rather no-nonsense, not at all the miniskirted cutie like most of the female crew members in the later series.
And Star Trek was an early advocate of 'multiculturalism' or at least pluralism; one of each was represented in the crew. Of course the later spinoff series were much farther gone down that road: not only multiple nationalities of earthlings, but aliens galore. That's real multiracialism; why be 'species-ist'?
But as Lileks says in his entertaining piece,
Nevertheless, the best Trek was conservative: it was rooted in the unchanging nature of man, be they hooting hominids on the plains of Earth throwing rocks at prey, or civilized spacefarers Money, power, lust, war: These were the constants, and Star Trek knew they’d follow us to infinity and beyond. At best we could find enlightened, savvy ways to avoid the pointless fights. But some people only understand a photon torpedo up the dorsal vent port, and we’d best be prepared to deal with them. The Federation, after all, had something called General Order 24, which called for the total destruction of a planet’s surface if the civilization was considered a threat to the Federation. As Vader might have said: Impressive.''
I have to say I've noticed that, too; a number of the Trek episodes had very conservative messages. I guess society hadn't attained to the present level of liberal 'enlightenment.' In a number of episodes, Kirk argued for the necessity of aggression and force in fighting evil. Another episode with a perhaps inadvertently conservative message was 'The Enemy Within', in which Kirk, split into two 'selves' via a transporter malfunction, had to fight his evil self, while his 'good' self proved ineffectual to do so. It was acknowledged that the aggressive, violent side had to be integrated with the good, though weak side in order for him to be an effective leader. Our society needs that lesson right now.
Lileks also mentions episodes like 'Errand of Mercy' in which Kirk tries to rally the seemingly passive people of a planet against the marauding Klingons, but the people have 'evolved beyond' aggression and in fact evolved beyond those troublesome physical bodies. That sounds like a liberal fantasy.
And then Lileks mentions the episode 'City on the Edge of Forever', written by Harlan Ellison, in which Kirk has to let his sweetie die so she won't found a pacifist movement. When I was young, I thought his letting her walk out in front of a car was tragic and wrong, but now I'm less sure.
The multicultural agenda of the original Trek used to bother me as I became conservative, but now that I think about it, it actually gives us cause for hope. Here's why: if today's multiculturalists are successful, there would not be any separate races or nationalities in the 23rd century. We would, if their plans succeed, be all one homogeneous group of people: no Russians, no Americans, no Scotsmen, no Swahili-speaking Africans, no Irishmen. Just Earthlings. But since all these people exist in the Star Trek future -- minus the Arabs -- maybe we and our cultures will forestall this Tower of Babel disaster that is being engineered.
And if the Arabs aren't a part of The Federation, maybe that's a sign that separationism will have succeeded.
We can hope. That's the message of Star Trek.
Wimps vs. barbarians
Over at Intergalactic Source of Truth, the Colonel linked to this piece from One Cosmos, entitled 'The Pathetic Last Children of Nietzsche's Pitiable Last Men.' Blogger Gagdad Bob writes a very cogent analysis tying together the present degenerated state of party politics in America and the breakdown of the family and male/female polarities. Some of you may have read this post when it first appeared way back in January 2006, but I missed it, and it's a great read, touching on some themes that I have dealt with here at times.
In this piece, Bob also mentions an article entitled Wimps and Barbarians, by Terrence O. Moore, which you may read in its entirety here. Moore's article discusses the lack in our modern society of manly virtues such as what the Greeks called Thumos, which is
Please read the discussion thread following Bob's essay on One Cosmos. The discussion covers, among other things, the role of anger in our society, and the tendency of some religious traditions to censure anger, notably Christianity (or some interpretations of it) and Buddhism.
Bob says
Evidently Bob is not a Christian, although unfortunately there are many nominal Christians who interpret Jesus' words in the same negative way. I would judge the dominance of psychology and the therapeutic culture, which Bob seems to be very conversant with, to be a huge part of the breakdown of our society and to be a contributing factor to the number of 'men without chests.' All the navel-gazing that is at the heart of modern man's self-focus, all the hand-wringing and ambivalence, and all the psychobabble about not being 'negative' or not 'judging' others, contributes to the loss of the manly qualities. Think of neurotic urban postmodern culture, embodied in Woody Allen movies and Dr. Phil, and secular liberal culture in which the least manly 'men' reside, the men who think hunting is barbaric, firearms are for redneck crazies, and war and self-defense are regressive ideas.
These people do not get their lack of manliness from Christianity and traditional Western culture.
A commenter, Kelly, on the discussion thread, makes some insightful comments about women and the loss of the male virtues; she says that women, too, suffer from the lack of courage and commitment. This seems true; the attitudes of many of today's ultraliberal women would not have been of much use on the frontier or back in the early days of the colonies. Women, too, are affected by the breakdown of our culture's values.
Moore's article says, in describing our culture's emasculating effects:
Moore also describes the debilitating effects of fatherless families, deficient discipline in schools, and the lack of male rites of passage in guiding boys to healthy manhood.
The essay and the blog discussion are stimulating reading.
I think the discussion of the role of anger, specifically, is one of the more important ones for us today, given that our society is under threat by some formidable forces -- demographic assault, and an invasion marked by sporadic violence, to which we seem unable or unwilling to offer the necessary resistance. Are we ourselves lacking in the courage and conviction, or is it only our rulers? Or do we get the government we deserve, as Joseph de Maistre said, and as I have quoted him? Why do we seem to choose the 'wimps' as rulers? Is this all we have to work with these days? Are there no 'men with chests' to lead? This also ties in with our discussion of the lack of leaders in our time.
And what's the solution? In our political scene, we seem to be locked into this struggle between the 'mommy party' Democrats, and the 'daddy party' Republicans. Or are the Republicans becoming another mommy party, with their 'compassionate conservatism', their political correctness, and the 'welcoming nation' policies? Do we need a real 'daddy party' to represent the masculine virtues which are so essential? Maybe this is part of the reason why a new party, a real conservative party is needed; the male virtues are not really represented in the two-party system we now have.
Personally I think we desperately need the male virtues in this day and age; the female approach, accommodation and peacemaking, are useless against merciless and aggressive enemies and rivals.
In this piece, Bob also mentions an article entitled Wimps and Barbarians, by Terrence O. Moore, which you may read in its entirety here. Moore's article discusses the lack in our modern society of manly virtues such as what the Greeks called Thumos, which is
...the part of the soul that contains the assertive passions: pugnacity, enterprise, ambition, anger. Thumos compels a man to defend proximate goods: himself, his honor, his lady, his country; as well as universal goods: truth, beauty, goodness, justice. Without thumotic men to combat the cruel, the malevolent, and the unjust, goodness and honor hardly have a chance in our precarious world. But two conditions must be present for thumos to fulfill its mission. First, the soul must be properly ordered. Besides thumos, symbolized by the chest, the soul is composed of reason and appetites, symbolized by the head on the one hand and the stomach and loins on the other. Reason has the capacity to discern right from wrong, but it lacks the strength to act. Appetites, while necessary to keep the body healthy, pull the individual toward pleasures of a lower order. In the well-ordered soul, as C.S. Lewis put it, "the head rules the belly through the chest." In the souls of today's barbarians, clearly thumos has allied itself with the unbridled appetites, and reason has been thrown out the window.
The second condition that must be present is a sufficient level of thumos to enable the man to rise to the defense of honor or goodness when required. Modern education and culture, however, have conspired to turn modern males into what C. S. Lewis called "men without chests," that is, wimps. The chest of the wimp has atrophied from want of early training. The wimp is therefore unable to live up to his duties as a man:
'We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.''
Please read the discussion thread following Bob's essay on One Cosmos. The discussion covers, among other things, the role of anger in our society, and the tendency of some religious traditions to censure anger, notably Christianity (or some interpretations of it) and Buddhism.
Bob says
To the extent that a tradition tries to eliminate anger, it is a false or partial teaching. Righteous anger is needed, but only in service of what is good or moral. Again, these traditions apparently noticed that anger was a problem in human affairs, and thought that they should just jettison the whole thing instead of doing the much harder work of diferentiating between healthy and pathological anger or moral and immoral violence.
[...]We know so much more today about psychology than they did then, about the roots of pathological anger in childhood trauma. The key is not to split off or repress anger, but to integrate it harmoniously within the psyche.
With regard to Christ's teaching, if in saying that we should always be passive in the face of violence, he wouldn't be a very wise man, would he? He certainly wouldn't be worthy of worship. After all, if I am more moral than the God I worship, what kind of God is that?''
Evidently Bob is not a Christian, although unfortunately there are many nominal Christians who interpret Jesus' words in the same negative way. I would judge the dominance of psychology and the therapeutic culture, which Bob seems to be very conversant with, to be a huge part of the breakdown of our society and to be a contributing factor to the number of 'men without chests.' All the navel-gazing that is at the heart of modern man's self-focus, all the hand-wringing and ambivalence, and all the psychobabble about not being 'negative' or not 'judging' others, contributes to the loss of the manly qualities. Think of neurotic urban postmodern culture, embodied in Woody Allen movies and Dr. Phil, and secular liberal culture in which the least manly 'men' reside, the men who think hunting is barbaric, firearms are for redneck crazies, and war and self-defense are regressive ideas.
These people do not get their lack of manliness from Christianity and traditional Western culture.
A commenter, Kelly, on the discussion thread, makes some insightful comments about women and the loss of the male virtues; she says that women, too, suffer from the lack of courage and commitment. This seems true; the attitudes of many of today's ultraliberal women would not have been of much use on the frontier or back in the early days of the colonies. Women, too, are affected by the breakdown of our culture's values.
Moore's article says, in describing our culture's emasculating effects:
A close look at the culture in which boys are raised reveals not only that they are no longer encouraged to become vigorous and responsible men, but also that practically every factor affecting their development is profoundly hostile to the ideals and practices of traditional manhood and the painstaking steps necessary to attain it. The demanding regime of physical and moral instruction that used to turn boys into men and the larger cultural forces that supported that instruction have been systematically dismantled by a culture that ostensibly enables all individuals but in reality disables men. "It's too easy!" complained John the Savage of the overly efficient, overly sexual, overly youthful, overly fun Brave New World. That dehumanizing tyranny of pleasure, described by Aldous Huxley, resembles the world of easy effort and easy virtue that entices adolescent males today to indulge in their appetites at the expense of their nobler longings and passions.''
Moore also describes the debilitating effects of fatherless families, deficient discipline in schools, and the lack of male rites of passage in guiding boys to healthy manhood.
The essay and the blog discussion are stimulating reading.
I think the discussion of the role of anger, specifically, is one of the more important ones for us today, given that our society is under threat by some formidable forces -- demographic assault, and an invasion marked by sporadic violence, to which we seem unable or unwilling to offer the necessary resistance. Are we ourselves lacking in the courage and conviction, or is it only our rulers? Or do we get the government we deserve, as Joseph de Maistre said, and as I have quoted him? Why do we seem to choose the 'wimps' as rulers? Is this all we have to work with these days? Are there no 'men with chests' to lead? This also ties in with our discussion of the lack of leaders in our time.
And what's the solution? In our political scene, we seem to be locked into this struggle between the 'mommy party' Democrats, and the 'daddy party' Republicans. Or are the Republicans becoming another mommy party, with their 'compassionate conservatism', their political correctness, and the 'welcoming nation' policies? Do we need a real 'daddy party' to represent the masculine virtues which are so essential? Maybe this is part of the reason why a new party, a real conservative party is needed; the male virtues are not really represented in the two-party system we now have.
Personally I think we desperately need the male virtues in this day and age; the female approach, accommodation and peacemaking, are useless against merciless and aggressive enemies and rivals.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
'By any means necessary'
This article, by Frank Zoretich, appeared in the Albuquerque Tribune nearly seven years ago, in 2000.It's a lengthy piece, reporting on the ideas of Charles Truxillo, a 'Professor of Chicano Studies' who said that the
Southwest shall secede from U.S.
Charles Truxillo, a professor of Chicano studies at the University of New Mexico, suggests "República del Norte" would be a good name for a new, sovereign Hispanic nation he foresees straddling the current border between the United States and Mexico.
The Republic of the North -- he predicts its creation as "an inevitability" -- would include all of the present U.S. states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, plus southern Colorado."
Stretching from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, it would also include the northern tier of current Mexican states: Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas.
Its capital would probably be Los Angeles. Truxillo, 47, has said the new country should be brought into being "by any means necessary."
But in a recent interview at a coffee shop near the UNM campus, Truxillo said it was "unlikely" civil war would attend its birth.
Instead, he said, the creation of the Republic of the North will be accomplished by political process, by the "electoral pressure" of the future majority Hispanic population throughout the region rather than by violence.
"Not within the next 20 years but within 80 years," he said. "I may not live to see the Hispanic homeland, but by the end of the century my students' kids will live in it, sovereign and free."
Truxillo said it's his task to help develop a "cadre of intellectuals" to begin thinking about the practicalities of how the Republic of the North can become a reality.''
A cadre of intellectuals? Please; I have seen your Chicano 'intellectuals' and they have not a shred of logic or wisdom or knowledge in a whole crowd of them. They are irrational, childish, and lacking in respect for truth and facts.
In the past, of course, wars have erupted when states seceded from either parent nation -- including the U.S. Civil War to keep the South in the Union and, in Truxillo's quick description, "the Alamo and all that" when Texas declared itself independent of Mexico.
Truxillo said the U.S. Civil War settled the question of secession militarily but not in a legal sense. States do have the right to secede, he maintained, if -- as was untrue in the 1860s -- the rest of the country is willing to let them go.''
Let me interject here: Truxillo may be an affirmative action professor of some bogus discipline called 'Chicano studies' but he is ignorant here as regards state's rights. But let's go on:
How realistic is it? That's one of the key issues," Truxillo said. "It's not unfeasible as a premise -- and a realistic possibility when you consider global geopolitical trends. It could happen with the support of the U.S. government."
Yes, and obviously our rogue U.S. government is providing its full support to you and your co-ethnics.
He listed a number of international developments that he said would have seemed "far-fetched in the 1950s," including the breakup of the Soviet Union, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the apparently imminent creation of an independent West Bank Palestinian state agreed to by Israel, and ballot-box separatist movements aimed at achieving a Quebec independent of Canada.
The "tide of history" is moving the U.S.-Mexico border region toward political autonomy, Truxillo said.''
Well, I can't gainsay him there; it looks as though, tragically for us, he was right.
Truxillo goes on to relate how he 'learned' the 'truth' about the Southwest being stolen from his Hispanic ancestors by evil Anglos. He learned this from a radical 'Chicano' who, in 1967, participated in a takeover of a courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, N.M. He claims that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which Mexico surrendered claim to the Southwest, was not legitimate, and that the United States had not honored the terms of that treaty.
None of the rights of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo were fulfilled," he told Tijerina. "None of the obligations were upheld. You told us this was our country, our patria, and that we should fight for our rights, that all colonized and exploited peoples should rise up in struggle for independence.
"We will one day be a majority and reclaim our birthright by any means necessary -- and we shouldn't shy away."
[emphasis mine]
Who told Truxillo that he and his people (and why aren't Americans your people, Charles? You're American-born, probably of American-born parents) should 'fight for their rights'? Or that 'all colonized and exploited peoples should rise up in struggle for independence'? Which of our founders said that? To take that Marxist nonsense as being part of American tradition is to pervert American tradition, which is what I said was happening: the enemies of the West, including unfortunately our homegrown enemies, pervert the meaning of our Constitution and our founding philosophies, just as they steal and corrupt the teachings of Christianity.
But notice his ominous words about Mexicans reclaiming 'their birthright' by any means necessary.
Even now, despite all the visible evidence that this takeover effort is well underway, there are the usual suspects, who try to dismiss the reconquista as a 'myth' and a conspiracy theory. And then there are the pestilential bleeding-heart types who say 'I know lots of very nice Hispanic people; it's only a few who are the extremists.' Heaven save us from the nice, stupid people in our country.
Truxillo says that some American-born Hispanics will resist the reconquista idea, but he predicted they would have a kind of identity crisis as the momentum for Hispanic independence grows. This is something I have predicted, too: Americanized Hispanics may seem to be on our side but many, especially the young, will find they are ambivalent and conflicted, and may become re-Hispanicized and ethnically militant, as young Moslems in Europe have done. Blood is thicker than 'national ideals.' Ethnicity trumps the 'proposition nation'. Truxillo's words:
There will be the negative reaction, the tortured response of someone who thinks, 'Give me a break. I just want to go to Wal-Mart.' But the idea will seep into their consciousness, and cause an internal crisis, a pain of conscience, an internal dialogue as they ask themselves: 'Who am I in this system?'"
Along both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border "there is a growing fusion, a reviving of connections," Truxillo said. "Southwest Chicanos and Norteño Mexicanos are becoming one people again."
Read the rest of the article. The Anglo-American professors who are consulted by the reporter have their heads stuck in the sand, although to be fair, this was in 2000, before the illegal invasion was as far advanced as it is now. I wonder if these professors were interviewed today, would they have changed their tune?
A La Raza activist, Pena, is interviewed, and he says that Mexicans were, at that time, not organized enough to mount a successful independence movement. He notes, tellingly, that a 'Chicano' separatist movement couldn't have succeeded because they lacked the firepower. Now, of course, they have several tens of millions of footsoldiers within our borders, some of them heavily armed gang members. And even more importantly, they are accomplishing their objective without having to use the firepower; they are doing it the easy way, by demographics and manipulation of the native Anglo population -- and with the willing collaboration of the government.
If Truxillo and his reconquista buddies retake this country, it won't have been accomplished honorably or legitimately; it will have been done by sneaky, underhanded means, by stealth, deception, and manipulation. Again, our basic chivalric values are being used against us by sneaks and opportunists.
This link quotes Truxillo, in another source, saying
'A new age of nationalism is sweeping the planet. Norteños are like Palestinians, Quebecois and Sri Lanka Tamils.''
However, I don't believe that, once having achieved a solid majority and control of the institutions in the Southwest that this new 'Aztlan' would actually secede or declare autonomy. No way. They will simply remain attached to the U.S. Why be independent and become another loser country like Mexico if you can cling to Uncle Sam and his moneybags? And further, they are smart enough to realize that they can control the entire country if they simply keep doing what they are doing now. They would be extremely foolish to stop with the Southwest. I am sure these grasping reconquistadores won't settle for less than the whole country. They've already decided that as 'indigenous' people, this whole continent is rightfully theirs.
By any means necessary, as he said.
Obviously Truxillo and his fellow reconquistadores have counted us out already. He is counting on our nationalism not asserting itself in opposition to his. Maybe this 'new age of nationalism' he is talking about may hold some surprises for him and his invader friends.
Wal-Mart shows us the future
In yesterday's mail, among the advertising flyers, there was one of those Wal-Mart ads, which many of you probably received. On the front was a picture of four children in Hallowe'en costumes, and I couldn't help noticing the 'multicultural' makeup of the group of children. One of them was black, or mixed-black, one obviously Mexican, one of indeterminate (possibly Asian) race, and off to the left was one lone white child, a blonde girl.
In the early days of civil rights agitation, angry protesters picketed TV stations to demand the hiring of black reporters or anchors. In one rather absurd incident, back in 1970, a group picketed a major retailer because their mannequins were too white, and the protesters demanded the placement of black mannequins with Afro hairstyles -- 'white' hair would not be acceptable. The rationale behind the demands was always that any group of people -- or mannequins, apparently -- had to reflect the actual percentages of each race in society. However as we've seen, those quotas apparently have shifted to making whitey a minority in the media and in advertising. A cursory look at the demographics of actors in advertising and the numbers of minorities in the news media would lead us to conclude that minorities must now in fact be a majority, or close to it.
When I showed the Wally World advertising to a friend who was here at the time, and asked 'do you think they are sending a message?' she understood what I meant, and agreed. She then proceeded to tell me that in our local Christian school, the children in the younger grades are being taught Spanish. It's not as if it's an elective course in the upper grades as before, but Spanish is taught to all students in the lower grades. Mind you, this is in a town which has a rather low percentage of Hispanics, if you believe the official census figures from a few years ago. We've seen major demographic changes within a few short years in many areas, though my area is still fairly homogenous.
I can believe that a public school, which is bound to obey the dictates of multiculturalism, would do such a thing, but a private, Christian-run school? I'm afraid my once-conservative, Calvinistic neighbors have bought into the modern, liberalizing 'emergent church' phenomenon, and are now adopting many of the ideas that used to belong only to those watered-down liberal denominations.
But as to the demographic trends in my town, and county, officially Hispanics make up only 5 percent of our town -- up from 1-2 percent in the previous count. But there are signs: in the supermarket where I shop, sometimes local schoolchildren are taken on field trips there to see how the supermarket operates, and how people work. Recently one second-grade class had left a handmade thank-you message to the manager, thanking him for letting them visit. The children signed their names. Among the usual Kaydens and Jaidyns and Taylors and Tanners and Mykaylas, there were several Hispanic names such as Guadalupe, Cruz, Marisol, Javier. A quick calculation of the number of Hispanic names makes it look as though the class was about one-fourth Hispanic. I fully expect the ratio to grow. In ten years' time, what will it be?
The little girl in the Wal-Mart ad will be representative of white American kids in another ten years, probably, outnumbered 3 to 1. In some areas, such as in border states, this is already the case.
There are relatively few Hispanics in my town -- as yet -- but those who are here seem to be having a bigger share of the children. And my town is one with a higher-than-average family size, being mostly populated by Christians who still believe in large families. Still, the numbers are not in our favor.
We have see the handwriting on the wall, and though it's in Spanish, we can read the message.
In the early days of civil rights agitation, angry protesters picketed TV stations to demand the hiring of black reporters or anchors. In one rather absurd incident, back in 1970, a group picketed a major retailer because their mannequins were too white, and the protesters demanded the placement of black mannequins with Afro hairstyles -- 'white' hair would not be acceptable. The rationale behind the demands was always that any group of people -- or mannequins, apparently -- had to reflect the actual percentages of each race in society. However as we've seen, those quotas apparently have shifted to making whitey a minority in the media and in advertising. A cursory look at the demographics of actors in advertising and the numbers of minorities in the news media would lead us to conclude that minorities must now in fact be a majority, or close to it.
When I showed the Wally World advertising to a friend who was here at the time, and asked 'do you think they are sending a message?' she understood what I meant, and agreed. She then proceeded to tell me that in our local Christian school, the children in the younger grades are being taught Spanish. It's not as if it's an elective course in the upper grades as before, but Spanish is taught to all students in the lower grades. Mind you, this is in a town which has a rather low percentage of Hispanics, if you believe the official census figures from a few years ago. We've seen major demographic changes within a few short years in many areas, though my area is still fairly homogenous.
I can believe that a public school, which is bound to obey the dictates of multiculturalism, would do such a thing, but a private, Christian-run school? I'm afraid my once-conservative, Calvinistic neighbors have bought into the modern, liberalizing 'emergent church' phenomenon, and are now adopting many of the ideas that used to belong only to those watered-down liberal denominations.
But as to the demographic trends in my town, and county, officially Hispanics make up only 5 percent of our town -- up from 1-2 percent in the previous count. But there are signs: in the supermarket where I shop, sometimes local schoolchildren are taken on field trips there to see how the supermarket operates, and how people work. Recently one second-grade class had left a handmade thank-you message to the manager, thanking him for letting them visit. The children signed their names. Among the usual Kaydens and Jaidyns and Taylors and Tanners and Mykaylas, there were several Hispanic names such as Guadalupe, Cruz, Marisol, Javier. A quick calculation of the number of Hispanic names makes it look as though the class was about one-fourth Hispanic. I fully expect the ratio to grow. In ten years' time, what will it be?
The little girl in the Wal-Mart ad will be representative of white American kids in another ten years, probably, outnumbered 3 to 1. In some areas, such as in border states, this is already the case.
There are relatively few Hispanics in my town -- as yet -- but those who are here seem to be having a bigger share of the children. And my town is one with a higher-than-average family size, being mostly populated by Christians who still believe in large families. Still, the numbers are not in our favor.
We have see the handwriting on the wall, and though it's in Spanish, we can read the message.
1066, and all that
On September 28, 1066, William, Duke of Normandy landed at Pevensey in Sussex; this led eventually to the Norman conquest of England.What does this have to do with America? It's part of our Western heritage, part of the backstory of America.
The Normans don't get much favorable coverage in our history books; the prevailing attitude is that the Normans were just these aggressors who came, saw, and conquered, and after playing the villains in stories like Robin Hood and Ivanhoe, disappeared into the mists of history. Wrong; they have many descendants in England today, as well as throughout the countries settled by British men and women. The Normans in fact have descendants in America today. Many of us of old-stock ancestry have considerable Norman ancestry.
We hear the term 'Anglo-Saxon' used so frequently that we forget the contribution Normans made to the history and the culture of Britain.
The influence on the English language was considerable; just compare Old English to Middle English.
Some of the Norman words which entered English are parliament, marriage, matrimony, courtesy, chivalry, and many others.
And speaking of invasions of England, Sir George Trevelyan said
It is a commonplace to say that the British are a people of mixed blood….it may be as well to say, at the outset, that the entrance to our islands of the races who people it today was completed at the time of the Norman conquest. With that event, which itself made less racial than social and cultural change, we come to an end of migratory invasions and forced entry at point of sword. Since Hastings there has been nothing more catastrophic than a slow peaceful infiltration of alien craftsmen and labourers -- Flemings, Huguenots, Irish and others -- with the acquiescence of the existing inhabitants of the island.”
I don't know when Sir George Trevelyan wrote those words, but doubtless it was before Britain was inundated with immigrants -- without the active consent of the existing inhabitants of the island.
Friday, September 28, 2007
More political incorrectness
Further thoughts relating to this thing called political correctness, some of them sparked by reactions to my previous post on the subject:
If there is something about Anglo-Saxons that fosters the attitudes embodied in political correctness, why did that something not appear in earlier centuries, or at least, not in the lethal form in which it appeared in the mid-20th century?
Another question: it's often asserted that Anglo-Saxon peoples, more than other European peoples, display weak ethnic identity or ethnocentrism. This is given as the reason why Anglosphere countries, particularly the UK, Canada, and America are being overrun by immigrants and opportunists, with the complicity of the native people. Yet at the same time, Anglo-Saxons have always been the recipients of sharp criticism by other ethnicities for being too exclusive, too dominant, too Anglocentric. This whole damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't, line of criticism is reminiscent of the similar contentions made about Christianity: that Christianity has always been militant, crusading, intolerant, and a cause of bloody conflicts, and at the same time, it is said to lead to universalism, pacifism, and sentimentality towards the world's losers.
It would seem, in the case of the criticism of Christians, as well as Anglo-Saxons, that something happened which resulted in a marked change by the mid-20th century. I don't accept that the liberalism which is supposed to characterize Anglo-Saxon peoples and Christians in general is intrinsic to those groups. I think it is obviously a recent development, or perversion.
Secondly, I see that the discussion is causing discomfort on the part of some of my readers. I don't see how I could write an honest post on the subject without making some uncomfortable, although that was not my intention. As I wrote before on this subject, I feel compelled to follow the truth where it leads, insofar as that is possible, and if that steps on someone's toes, I can only say it's unfortunate. I cannot, in good conscience, decree certain groups to be exempted from examination or criticism. If I did so, I would only be yielding to the political correctness I so often deplore and rail against -- which would make me something of a hypocrite.
As I've said, civility and reasoned arguments are essential; make a civil, reasoned, argument, and your views will generally be allowed. If any object to those views, answer them with civility and reason. Refute them if you can. That's the best way, not flames or hurt feelings or offense-taking. So far, this has been the tone of the comments, with mature attitudes predominating.
I think those of us who see that our country, and Western Christian civilization are under siege and in danger realize that will never be equal to the task of defending our heritage if we are offended or made uneasy by criticism of certain groups, whichever they may be. Nobody should be above criticism or questioning. If some are not able to accept my approach, so be it. I have long since learned it's impossible to please everybody while pursuing truth and honesty.
Our society in the West is drowning in dishonesty and cant; I won't participate in it. I will tolerate a lot of things but I will not bow to the dishonesty and cant of political correctness. I have to repeat again what my kinsman (one of the non-liberal WASP New Englanders) wrote:
Political correctness has made liars and hypocrites of too many of us. We have made certain classes of people to be near-saints, while we ourselves are cast into the role of the perpetual villain, responsible for all the world's injustices and woes. Enough is enough.
Our founding ancestors sought to shed many of the habits of the old world, such as the belief in an aristocracy of birth. Certain people, by virtue of their birth, were entitled to greater respect and privilege and flattery. Political Correctness merely created a kind of upside-down aristocracy, in which the underdogs become the exalted class. I won't participate in that injustice any more. If all men are truly equal under the law, then no group or class, past history of suffering notwithstanding, has a right to be above criticism.
Some still cling to the habit of making excuses for the protected victim classes, maybe in a show of noblesse oblige, or maybe in an attempt to allay a conscience that feels guilt at saying 'mean-spirited' things about the victims of the world. But we are under siege; we are on the ropes. We don't have time to worry about the victims and the laggards and the losers of the world; we have to worry about us and our children and our children's children -- if we can last that long. And we will not be able to if we are still prone to take everybody's side but our own. To those of you who still have guilty consciences or tender feelings towards the others, what can I say? Sacrifice yourself and your children if you must, but don't hold the rest of us back, and don't try to impart your guilt feelings or your sanctimony to the rest of us. We can't allow ourselves to be hampered by foolish altruism when we are in trouble. Our misplaced altruism and concern for the world has put us in this dire predicament.
I notice that one or two of the bloggers who link to me are attempting to edge away and distance themselves as I post some of these controversial pieces. So be it; I can understand that some don't want to be tainted by association, even if only through a link on a blogroll, to someone who is pushing the PC envelope. If any of the faint-hearted want to de-link me, that's fine. My ancestors didn't shrink from controversy or opprobrium, and I don't either. I have to say what I have to say, and if I say it to an audience of a few, or nobody at all, so be it. I won't go along to get along, and I won't try to please or flatter anybody at the expense of truth.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said,
I suppose the very fact that I feel the need to say these things in regard to political correctness shows that even the PC scofflaws, like myself, feel constrained to offer justifications for our rebellion. And it shows that people who are ostensibly on the same side are still unable to tolerate speech that walks too close to the edge and defies the very powerful taboos.
At least this discussion will sift us, and help us decide who is who, and who is where. Examining reality honestly is never a loss.
For now, I'm considering a post on our politically incorrect founders and forefathers. Too often we are presented with a whitewashed view of the Founding Fathers and other great leaders, which bowdlerizes many of their politically incorrect statements. This is a distortion I would like to see rectified.
If there is something about Anglo-Saxons that fosters the attitudes embodied in political correctness, why did that something not appear in earlier centuries, or at least, not in the lethal form in which it appeared in the mid-20th century?
Another question: it's often asserted that Anglo-Saxon peoples, more than other European peoples, display weak ethnic identity or ethnocentrism. This is given as the reason why Anglosphere countries, particularly the UK, Canada, and America are being overrun by immigrants and opportunists, with the complicity of the native people. Yet at the same time, Anglo-Saxons have always been the recipients of sharp criticism by other ethnicities for being too exclusive, too dominant, too Anglocentric. This whole damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't, line of criticism is reminiscent of the similar contentions made about Christianity: that Christianity has always been militant, crusading, intolerant, and a cause of bloody conflicts, and at the same time, it is said to lead to universalism, pacifism, and sentimentality towards the world's losers.
It would seem, in the case of the criticism of Christians, as well as Anglo-Saxons, that something happened which resulted in a marked change by the mid-20th century. I don't accept that the liberalism which is supposed to characterize Anglo-Saxon peoples and Christians in general is intrinsic to those groups. I think it is obviously a recent development, or perversion.
Secondly, I see that the discussion is causing discomfort on the part of some of my readers. I don't see how I could write an honest post on the subject without making some uncomfortable, although that was not my intention. As I wrote before on this subject, I feel compelled to follow the truth where it leads, insofar as that is possible, and if that steps on someone's toes, I can only say it's unfortunate. I cannot, in good conscience, decree certain groups to be exempted from examination or criticism. If I did so, I would only be yielding to the political correctness I so often deplore and rail against -- which would make me something of a hypocrite.
As I've said, civility and reasoned arguments are essential; make a civil, reasoned, argument, and your views will generally be allowed. If any object to those views, answer them with civility and reason. Refute them if you can. That's the best way, not flames or hurt feelings or offense-taking. So far, this has been the tone of the comments, with mature attitudes predominating.
I think those of us who see that our country, and Western Christian civilization are under siege and in danger realize that will never be equal to the task of defending our heritage if we are offended or made uneasy by criticism of certain groups, whichever they may be. Nobody should be above criticism or questioning. If some are not able to accept my approach, so be it. I have long since learned it's impossible to please everybody while pursuing truth and honesty.
Our society in the West is drowning in dishonesty and cant; I won't participate in it. I will tolerate a lot of things but I will not bow to the dishonesty and cant of political correctness. I have to repeat again what my kinsman (one of the non-liberal WASP New Englanders) wrote:
I never hated anything in my life except two things: dishonesty and the appeasement of evil. These I hate with every fiber of my being. I would rather face controversy and bitterness indefinitely than surrender to either one.'' - Carleton Putnam, Race and Reality
Political correctness has made liars and hypocrites of too many of us. We have made certain classes of people to be near-saints, while we ourselves are cast into the role of the perpetual villain, responsible for all the world's injustices and woes. Enough is enough.
Our founding ancestors sought to shed many of the habits of the old world, such as the belief in an aristocracy of birth. Certain people, by virtue of their birth, were entitled to greater respect and privilege and flattery. Political Correctness merely created a kind of upside-down aristocracy, in which the underdogs become the exalted class. I won't participate in that injustice any more. If all men are truly equal under the law, then no group or class, past history of suffering notwithstanding, has a right to be above criticism.
Some still cling to the habit of making excuses for the protected victim classes, maybe in a show of noblesse oblige, or maybe in an attempt to allay a conscience that feels guilt at saying 'mean-spirited' things about the victims of the world. But we are under siege; we are on the ropes. We don't have time to worry about the victims and the laggards and the losers of the world; we have to worry about us and our children and our children's children -- if we can last that long. And we will not be able to if we are still prone to take everybody's side but our own. To those of you who still have guilty consciences or tender feelings towards the others, what can I say? Sacrifice yourself and your children if you must, but don't hold the rest of us back, and don't try to impart your guilt feelings or your sanctimony to the rest of us. We can't allow ourselves to be hampered by foolish altruism when we are in trouble. Our misplaced altruism and concern for the world has put us in this dire predicament.
I notice that one or two of the bloggers who link to me are attempting to edge away and distance themselves as I post some of these controversial pieces. So be it; I can understand that some don't want to be tainted by association, even if only through a link on a blogroll, to someone who is pushing the PC envelope. If any of the faint-hearted want to de-link me, that's fine. My ancestors didn't shrink from controversy or opprobrium, and I don't either. I have to say what I have to say, and if I say it to an audience of a few, or nobody at all, so be it. I won't go along to get along, and I won't try to please or flatter anybody at the expense of truth.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said,
I will not hide my tastes or aversions...If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.''
I suppose the very fact that I feel the need to say these things in regard to political correctness shows that even the PC scofflaws, like myself, feel constrained to offer justifications for our rebellion. And it shows that people who are ostensibly on the same side are still unable to tolerate speech that walks too close to the edge and defies the very powerful taboos.
At least this discussion will sift us, and help us decide who is who, and who is where. Examining reality honestly is never a loss.
For now, I'm considering a post on our politically incorrect founders and forefathers. Too often we are presented with a whitewashed view of the Founding Fathers and other great leaders, which bowdlerizes many of their politically incorrect statements. This is a distortion I would like to see rectified.
Yeagley on globalism, 'missionary America', and nationhood
David Yeagley over at Badeagle.com is one of the really unique voices on the conservative side of the political spectrum -- or on any side, really. If you don't know Dr. Yeagley's work, you should. He always has his own take, and provokes real thought.
This piece appeared a few days ago, and I didn't get around to linking to it. An excerpt:
This piece appeared a few days ago, and I didn't get around to linking to it. An excerpt:
...Globalism seems so godly. World responsibility seems so appropriate, so saintly. What could possibly be wrong with it?It is devoid of religion. If religion causes all the problems in the world, as agnostics love to boast, how can anyone expect the world ever to be rid of religion? What kind of solution will not involve religion, or would not consider its predominant existence? If religion is the human instinct, if religion dominates the human experience, how are Cadillacs going to rid the world of religion? Muslim leaders have plenty of Cadillacs. This hasn't changed their world view. They're so crazed that they are angry about having Cadillacs, and blaming America that such things exist, while they drive them.
Ye olde Protestant concept that material blessing is the reward of right doing, right believing, and right values, is the missing element in the globalist solution. Material prosperity, as a human right, is wrong. There is no such principle in any religion. But this is all globalism has to offer--material prosperity, or the hope thereof. This will never, ever come about, and will only tempt more 'in between' people to war. Everyone will never own a Cadillac. Nature won't allow it. While it may seem a noble idea, it is an impossible idea, and one that nature will not abide. (Dare we so contradict nature?)
Even in the commonwealth of ancient Israel, housing the very presence of the Almighty, "the poor shall never cease out of the land." Deuteronomy 15:11. Of course, "therefore...open thine hand wide unto thy brother." But, this is within the brotherhood, the community, the nation. It does not follow that a nation is to behave toward other nations in this way. Nationhood is the crux of the matter here. Nationhood is ordained of that same God. We are not to weaken nationhood by obliterating borders, enmesshing all economies, and ignoring each nation's individual responsibility to shape up!
On political correctness, multiculturalism, and their effects
In a recent thread here on this blog, commenter james c opined that multiculturalism and political correctness seem to have started within the Anglosphere. This thought caused me to want to explore the origins of political correctness and multiculturalism, so this entry will be a very tentative attempt to consider that question. I hope my readers will feel free to offer their own thoughts on this subject.
Of course we all have a general idea of how and where these poisonous ideas started. Political correctness is also known as 'cultural Marxism', and it is an attempt to apply Marxist ideas to the social sphere. Economic or political Marxism focus on the means of production and the economic connection between human beings, or more accurately, between classes of people. In fact, the economic nexus is the explanation for everything in the Marxist world view. Cultural Marxism tends to focus, again, on groups of people, and on the power relationships between them. And of course those with power, or apparent power, are cast in the role of villains in the same way that the rich or the bourgeoisie are the villains in the economic view according to Marx. The downtrodden, the 'wretched of the earth', the workers, the exploited classes, are the heroes in that scheme of things. In cultural Marxism, socially 'exploited' or oppressed groups, those who are weak in some way, those who are less successful, those who are outsiders or outlaws are the heroes by virtue of their weakness and ascribed victim status. And the system of speech codes and social hierarchies which we call political correctness is just a way of codifying the social order as seen by the cultural Marxists, with minorities, women, gays, and Third Worlders (not necessarily in that order) as the apex of the pyramid. Members of those groups are to be treated with kid gloves, spoken of in exaggeratedly respectful terms, exempted from criticism and from accountability for their actions, and above all, must not be offended in any way, whether by failing to display proper deference or by using a taboo name to designate these groups.
What political correctness does is to attempt to coerce respect for groups of people regardless of inward attitude. It attempts to coerce and enforce feelings and thoughts. It is akin to forcing conversion to a religion and demanding that the unwilling participant display reverence without belief. It demands insincerity, because it fails to acknowledge that you cannot coerce feeling or thought. You can only coerce behavior, outward compliance, which is hollow and empty.
So, since we know that political correctness is an offshoot of Marxism and leftism in general, how did it come to be so dominant in America? And did it originate here, or were Americans the first to adopt it to a large extent? There were others who contributed to the growth of the system we now call political correctness, among them, Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, and George Lukacs, a Hungarian. They perceived that Marxism, as it was originally proposed, was not working in the West. As time went on, the United States seemed impervious to the efforts to mobilize the proletariat to revolt, because American blue-collar workers began to be the best-paid in the world. A 'proletariat' which lived a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, as many skilled tradespeople and factory workers did in America during much of the 20th century, was not likely to rally to the cry to revolt. Some Marxists began to see blacks as the substitute for the 'proletariat' as the vanguard of the revolution, and it's well-known that efforts were made to encourage disaffection and rebellion among blacks. This bore fruit by the mid-20th century.
Much of the ferment in leftist thinking occurred in Europe, with the so-called Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, which attempted to bring down Western culture simply by relentlessly criticizing every aspect of the culture from the angle of every 'oppressed' or aggrieved group. It was an attempt to discredit the existing order of things and to foment more dissatisfaction and anger to be channeled into revolt. And of course by this time, the ideas of Gramsci, who advocated infiltrating all the existing institutions to bring them down from within, had mostly supplanted the old-fashioned idea of armed revolt.
Another factor which strengthened the left's war on America was the youth culture of the 1960s, in which the baby-boom generation, the millions of young people who grew up during the prosperous 50s, reached adolescence. This group, of which I am one, was a rather spoiled and privileged group who, when confronted with the imperfections of the adult world, responded with petulance and rebellion. The so-called 'New Left', based in the Frankfurt School, and represented by people like Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, saw in the Boomers a restless but malleable group that could be mobilized for the revolution.
So, shrewdly divining the hedonistic and shallow character of many Boomers, they chose to dumb down the leftist wonkishness and focus on hedonism, eroticism, and self-indulgence, all the while with a veneer of self-righteous moralizing about peace and love.
It worked. In contrast, the old leftism, especially as exemplified in the Soviet Union and Red China, was puritanical in the extreme. Those of us who grew up in the Cold War era read many news stories of how rock 'n roll was banned in the Communist countries as 'decadent' and lewd. The Communist countries always denounced the 'decadence' and degenerate nature of Western countries. It was said that when Mao Tse-Tung (now known as Mao Zedong) assumed power in China, he completely eradicated prostitution and other such vice, and eliminated STDs. How true this was, I don't know. But the fact is, among baby-boom Americans, such strict moralism was not likely to sell. My peers and I were brought up in a fairly strait-laced time, when the 'old morality' still prevailed, and many now blame Boomers for the promiscuous and permissive culture which suddenly appeared in the late 60s and 70s. However, the blame also goes partly to Hollywood and popular culture, which had already begun a liberalizing campaign by the 1950s. Please see the movies of the mid-50s for examples. There was a spate of movies on lurid and salacious subjects which began then, and my baby-boom peers and I were then in grade school. So we did not invent the X-rated culture, though we did participate eagerly in it when we were of age to do so -- encouraged by the 'New Left' philosophy.
There was a kind of collusion of interests: Hollywood and the entertainment industry wanted to sell titillating movies and music to a 'repressed' public, especially to the baby-boom generation, who represented a very lucrative new market. So good old capitalism was happy to collude, wittingly or unwittingly, with the left's desire to alienate and radicalize the young, and thus bring down Western culture.
We all know the history of the 60s and 70s, with racial strife, a sometimes violent anti-war movement, strident feminists, and the general overturning of most things traditional and old-fashioned.
The process seemed to be happening in the rest of the Western countries on a parallel track. As student riots and unrest were happening in America, we read of the 1968 student uprising in France. Similar unrest and violence happened in various places, and cultural upheaval was a phenomenon all over the West.
At around this same time in the United States, we began to see mass immigration, on a scale unknown previously, and almost exclusively from non-Western, non-white countries. Slowly at first, and then more quickly, our cities began to be transformed, as more and more exotic peoples and their enclaves became an accepted part of the American landscape. However, during the early phase, most of the immigration was limited to big cities, while small-town and rural America remained as it had always been.
In the wake of the Civil Rights movement, Americans of European ancestry had become accustomed to learning to use appropriate terms for black people; at that time, the acceptable word was declared to be the word 'Negro' which replaced the former polite term, 'colored.' But by the end of the 60s, the term 'Negro' was decreed, by the more militant, to be a slur, and the word 'Black' to be the acceptable name. An alternative was 'Afro-American', but that did not catch on. Black became the polite word. Similarly, as other disgruntled groups witnessed the success of blacks, they too made demands. Women began marching in the streets as blacks had done, making demands, denouncing 'male chauvinism'. Women declared that 'women's libber' was a slur, and 'feminist' was the accepted term. Asians demanded not to be called 'Oriental' on the basis that it was a term that conjured up stereotypes, as in 'the inscrutable Oriental.'
Homosexuals were soon demanding special rights, including re-labeling as 'gay' rather than homosexual.
And, thanks to the agitation by home-grown black Moslems, the term 'Moslem' was out, and the preferred term 'Muslim' was established. Of course, at that time, most of the Moslems in this country were American-born blacks who had converted to Elijah Muhammad's sect of Islam.
But this was the beginning in earnest of politically correct language in this country. One of the things which some people quickly objected to was the arbitrary nature of some of the terminology. The frequent changes of names, from colored to Negro to black to the present 'African-American', keeps people off balance. The demands seem more like an assertion of power and dominance than anything else, especially when the unwitting offender who slips up and uses an outmoded word is subject to accusations of racism.
Political correctness, after all, is based in cultural Marxism, which is all about power, and attempting to reorder power relationships between the strong and the weak, the 'oppressor' and the 'oppressed.' It's all about revenge, really. It's about payback.
And political correctness takes two; the former victim, who asserts superiority simply because of a history of victimhood, and the supposed victimizer, who must agree to assume a penitent pose.
The Civil Rights movement, which plays a pivotal role in this turnaround of American society -- and oddly, it seems, all of Western society -- took inspiration from the tactics of Mohandas Gandhi, with his strategy of 'satyagraha' or truth-force. His nonviolent tactics, in defying the British colonial powers, relied on the essentially principled and humane nature of British culture. To use non-violent tactics, such as lying inert on a railroad track, against an unscrupulous power would result in the peaceful protester being turned to mincemeat. The British valued human life, coming from a culture still dominated by Christian morality and chivalry, and thus would be reluctant to harm a defenseless, unarmed, nonviolent opponent. The Indians, led by Gandhi, used the morality of the British against them. The same thing happened in the Civil Rights movement. By and large, most Americans, coming from the same Western Christian culture, would not attack unarmed men, or women. And even when militant blacks took up arms, or rioted, as in Watts, Detroit, and many other places, the response was mild. And it has become weaker as the decades have gone by; look at the Los Angeles riots in 1992.
So it's been said, in a broader sense, that the West is being defeated by its own values, its own softheartedness and basically humane sensibilites. The Moslems, in Iraq and everywhere they confront us, are doing the same thing: they are turning our virtues into weaknesses by exploiting them. The Mexicans and other illegals who are invading and colonizing our country have our number, too; they know that for every tough gringo, there are half a dozen soft-hearted ones who want to help them, take care of them, treat them as dependent children. Thus we aid in our own destruction.
I've heard it said on numerous occasions that Christianity is to blame for this apparent weakness of Western culture. And I've heard it said on equally numerous occasions that Anglo-Saxons are the most liberal of all ethnic groups in this country. Look at Britain, they say; Britain is farther down the road of national suicide than other European countries. And here in America, they say, it's the WASP elites who sell out their country and advocate multiculturalism and 'diversity'. WASPs invented multiculturalism, I have heard from various people.
First, the question I ask in regard to the WASPs in America is: are you referring to the WASP elites, such as the vaunted 'Boston Brahmins' or the old WASP money in the Northeast? How many of them are there? Do they represent all WASP Americans? I would say not; they are a relatively small group of people, unrepresentative of the vast majority of Americans of mostly Anglo-Saxon Protestant origin. I question how much actual power they have over events in America, despite the fact that there are wealthy and prominent WASPs. I don't see any real center of power there. We might say that historically, WASPs from the original New England colonies tended to become liberal in a religious sense as they became Transcendentalists. They tended to be universalists, and to be in the vanguard of radical ideas like woman suffrage and abolition and what we would now call the 'social gospel', the attempt to create heaven on earth by good works and good intentions. I say that tendency has caused mischief and damage. Those who followed that philosophy were the forerunners of today's meddlesome, self-righteous liberals. They paved the way for today's leftism, multiculturalism, and political correctness. I say this with some chagrin, since many of my ancestors and kinsmen from New England were, in fact, agitators for these liberal programs. Name a liberal cause of the time, and you can find some of my kinfolks from New England at the forefront of it. I can't say I am proud of that.
There may be a grain of truth, too, in the charge that Britain and America were more prone to liberalism, given that Britain seems to have more serious problems than say, France or Germany with immigration and multiculturalism. But did the British, or Anglo-Saxons, invent multiculturalism? I see no evidence of that. The one factor that might have predisposed both the UK and America to adopt a 'multiculturalist' outlook is that America has been traditionally a receiving country for immigration -- although it is not a 'nation of immigrants'. However we have accepted immigrants from many nations, and at first, maybe the 'melting pot' metaphor was a way of trying to put a positive spin on the mixture of peoples in this country. Similarly Britain was a nation which was the great imperial power, with an empire on which the sun never set. Having had a vast empire which included people of many races and nations, they may have developed a tolerance for 'diversity' that other nations without such an empire never developed.
Multiculturalism, I think, was an afterthought. When America began to receive heterogeneous immigration, from Southern and Eastern Europe and from Asia, for example, there was an attempt to concoct a way to make others feel included, at the very least, so as to minimize strife and conflict. What began as a well-intentioned gesture to make new immigrants feel a part of our country became entrenched, and the polite myths about the wonderful 'contributions' made by every ethnic group were taken as gospel, and exaggerated further. Now each group, no matter how insignificant in the larger scheme of things, demands its place in the sun, demands credit for some supposed accomplishment. And by now, we are used to acquiescing. Our ancestors, bless their hearts, had little idea of the monster they created in the 'melting pot' myth.
So the myth of pluralism, and of America as the 'first universal nation' was invented, and the emphasis placed on adherence to a creed, a vague set of beliefs about 'freedom', democracy, and equality. When leftism became powerful, then dominant in the 60s, the existing American national values and myths were co-opted and the meanings thereof given a subtle twist, so as to clothe leftist ideas in traditional American clothes. It worked. So now, we have changeling ideas, such as leftist egalitarianism, dressed up as the founding values. Diane Alden, in this essay on Political Correctness, said
Leftism and its political correctness has, to use a worn cliche of our time, 'hijacked' the institutions and the high ideals of our culture, and perverted them into a caricature of their original meanings. This has happened with Christianity, as a liberalized, politicized, watery version of the faith of our fathers has been substituted for the real thing. And it is happening, or has happened, with our American founding ideals.
The phrase 'all men are created equal' has been stretched beyond anything Thomas Jefferson ever imagined or intended, I am sure.
Here is a good encapsulation of what is wrong with political correctness, taken from a lengthy essay here:
Note: I offer a few links below, which might provide some more food for thought or fodder for discussion:
Philip Atkinson on The Origins and Nature of Political Correctness
Frank Ellis on the Soviet Origins of Political Correctness
A leftist academic credits John Winthrop with laying the foundations of multiculturalism
Of course we all have a general idea of how and where these poisonous ideas started. Political correctness is also known as 'cultural Marxism', and it is an attempt to apply Marxist ideas to the social sphere. Economic or political Marxism focus on the means of production and the economic connection between human beings, or more accurately, between classes of people. In fact, the economic nexus is the explanation for everything in the Marxist world view. Cultural Marxism tends to focus, again, on groups of people, and on the power relationships between them. And of course those with power, or apparent power, are cast in the role of villains in the same way that the rich or the bourgeoisie are the villains in the economic view according to Marx. The downtrodden, the 'wretched of the earth', the workers, the exploited classes, are the heroes in that scheme of things. In cultural Marxism, socially 'exploited' or oppressed groups, those who are weak in some way, those who are less successful, those who are outsiders or outlaws are the heroes by virtue of their weakness and ascribed victim status. And the system of speech codes and social hierarchies which we call political correctness is just a way of codifying the social order as seen by the cultural Marxists, with minorities, women, gays, and Third Worlders (not necessarily in that order) as the apex of the pyramid. Members of those groups are to be treated with kid gloves, spoken of in exaggeratedly respectful terms, exempted from criticism and from accountability for their actions, and above all, must not be offended in any way, whether by failing to display proper deference or by using a taboo name to designate these groups.
What political correctness does is to attempt to coerce respect for groups of people regardless of inward attitude. It attempts to coerce and enforce feelings and thoughts. It is akin to forcing conversion to a religion and demanding that the unwilling participant display reverence without belief. It demands insincerity, because it fails to acknowledge that you cannot coerce feeling or thought. You can only coerce behavior, outward compliance, which is hollow and empty.
So, since we know that political correctness is an offshoot of Marxism and leftism in general, how did it come to be so dominant in America? And did it originate here, or were Americans the first to adopt it to a large extent? There were others who contributed to the growth of the system we now call political correctness, among them, Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, and George Lukacs, a Hungarian. They perceived that Marxism, as it was originally proposed, was not working in the West. As time went on, the United States seemed impervious to the efforts to mobilize the proletariat to revolt, because American blue-collar workers began to be the best-paid in the world. A 'proletariat' which lived a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, as many skilled tradespeople and factory workers did in America during much of the 20th century, was not likely to rally to the cry to revolt. Some Marxists began to see blacks as the substitute for the 'proletariat' as the vanguard of the revolution, and it's well-known that efforts were made to encourage disaffection and rebellion among blacks. This bore fruit by the mid-20th century.
Much of the ferment in leftist thinking occurred in Europe, with the so-called Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, which attempted to bring down Western culture simply by relentlessly criticizing every aspect of the culture from the angle of every 'oppressed' or aggrieved group. It was an attempt to discredit the existing order of things and to foment more dissatisfaction and anger to be channeled into revolt. And of course by this time, the ideas of Gramsci, who advocated infiltrating all the existing institutions to bring them down from within, had mostly supplanted the old-fashioned idea of armed revolt.
Another factor which strengthened the left's war on America was the youth culture of the 1960s, in which the baby-boom generation, the millions of young people who grew up during the prosperous 50s, reached adolescence. This group, of which I am one, was a rather spoiled and privileged group who, when confronted with the imperfections of the adult world, responded with petulance and rebellion. The so-called 'New Left', based in the Frankfurt School, and represented by people like Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, saw in the Boomers a restless but malleable group that could be mobilized for the revolution.
So, shrewdly divining the hedonistic and shallow character of many Boomers, they chose to dumb down the leftist wonkishness and focus on hedonism, eroticism, and self-indulgence, all the while with a veneer of self-righteous moralizing about peace and love.
It worked. In contrast, the old leftism, especially as exemplified in the Soviet Union and Red China, was puritanical in the extreme. Those of us who grew up in the Cold War era read many news stories of how rock 'n roll was banned in the Communist countries as 'decadent' and lewd. The Communist countries always denounced the 'decadence' and degenerate nature of Western countries. It was said that when Mao Tse-Tung (now known as Mao Zedong) assumed power in China, he completely eradicated prostitution and other such vice, and eliminated STDs. How true this was, I don't know. But the fact is, among baby-boom Americans, such strict moralism was not likely to sell. My peers and I were brought up in a fairly strait-laced time, when the 'old morality' still prevailed, and many now blame Boomers for the promiscuous and permissive culture which suddenly appeared in the late 60s and 70s. However, the blame also goes partly to Hollywood and popular culture, which had already begun a liberalizing campaign by the 1950s. Please see the movies of the mid-50s for examples. There was a spate of movies on lurid and salacious subjects which began then, and my baby-boom peers and I were then in grade school. So we did not invent the X-rated culture, though we did participate eagerly in it when we were of age to do so -- encouraged by the 'New Left' philosophy.
There was a kind of collusion of interests: Hollywood and the entertainment industry wanted to sell titillating movies and music to a 'repressed' public, especially to the baby-boom generation, who represented a very lucrative new market. So good old capitalism was happy to collude, wittingly or unwittingly, with the left's desire to alienate and radicalize the young, and thus bring down Western culture.
We all know the history of the 60s and 70s, with racial strife, a sometimes violent anti-war movement, strident feminists, and the general overturning of most things traditional and old-fashioned.
The process seemed to be happening in the rest of the Western countries on a parallel track. As student riots and unrest were happening in America, we read of the 1968 student uprising in France. Similar unrest and violence happened in various places, and cultural upheaval was a phenomenon all over the West.
At around this same time in the United States, we began to see mass immigration, on a scale unknown previously, and almost exclusively from non-Western, non-white countries. Slowly at first, and then more quickly, our cities began to be transformed, as more and more exotic peoples and their enclaves became an accepted part of the American landscape. However, during the early phase, most of the immigration was limited to big cities, while small-town and rural America remained as it had always been.
In the wake of the Civil Rights movement, Americans of European ancestry had become accustomed to learning to use appropriate terms for black people; at that time, the acceptable word was declared to be the word 'Negro' which replaced the former polite term, 'colored.' But by the end of the 60s, the term 'Negro' was decreed, by the more militant, to be a slur, and the word 'Black' to be the acceptable name. An alternative was 'Afro-American', but that did not catch on. Black became the polite word. Similarly, as other disgruntled groups witnessed the success of blacks, they too made demands. Women began marching in the streets as blacks had done, making demands, denouncing 'male chauvinism'. Women declared that 'women's libber' was a slur, and 'feminist' was the accepted term. Asians demanded not to be called 'Oriental' on the basis that it was a term that conjured up stereotypes, as in 'the inscrutable Oriental.'
Homosexuals were soon demanding special rights, including re-labeling as 'gay' rather than homosexual.
And, thanks to the agitation by home-grown black Moslems, the term 'Moslem' was out, and the preferred term 'Muslim' was established. Of course, at that time, most of the Moslems in this country were American-born blacks who had converted to Elijah Muhammad's sect of Islam.
But this was the beginning in earnest of politically correct language in this country. One of the things which some people quickly objected to was the arbitrary nature of some of the terminology. The frequent changes of names, from colored to Negro to black to the present 'African-American', keeps people off balance. The demands seem more like an assertion of power and dominance than anything else, especially when the unwitting offender who slips up and uses an outmoded word is subject to accusations of racism.
Political correctness, after all, is based in cultural Marxism, which is all about power, and attempting to reorder power relationships between the strong and the weak, the 'oppressor' and the 'oppressed.' It's all about revenge, really. It's about payback.
And political correctness takes two; the former victim, who asserts superiority simply because of a history of victimhood, and the supposed victimizer, who must agree to assume a penitent pose.
The Civil Rights movement, which plays a pivotal role in this turnaround of American society -- and oddly, it seems, all of Western society -- took inspiration from the tactics of Mohandas Gandhi, with his strategy of 'satyagraha' or truth-force. His nonviolent tactics, in defying the British colonial powers, relied on the essentially principled and humane nature of British culture. To use non-violent tactics, such as lying inert on a railroad track, against an unscrupulous power would result in the peaceful protester being turned to mincemeat. The British valued human life, coming from a culture still dominated by Christian morality and chivalry, and thus would be reluctant to harm a defenseless, unarmed, nonviolent opponent. The Indians, led by Gandhi, used the morality of the British against them. The same thing happened in the Civil Rights movement. By and large, most Americans, coming from the same Western Christian culture, would not attack unarmed men, or women. And even when militant blacks took up arms, or rioted, as in Watts, Detroit, and many other places, the response was mild. And it has become weaker as the decades have gone by; look at the Los Angeles riots in 1992.
So it's been said, in a broader sense, that the West is being defeated by its own values, its own softheartedness and basically humane sensibilites. The Moslems, in Iraq and everywhere they confront us, are doing the same thing: they are turning our virtues into weaknesses by exploiting them. The Mexicans and other illegals who are invading and colonizing our country have our number, too; they know that for every tough gringo, there are half a dozen soft-hearted ones who want to help them, take care of them, treat them as dependent children. Thus we aid in our own destruction.
I've heard it said on numerous occasions that Christianity is to blame for this apparent weakness of Western culture. And I've heard it said on equally numerous occasions that Anglo-Saxons are the most liberal of all ethnic groups in this country. Look at Britain, they say; Britain is farther down the road of national suicide than other European countries. And here in America, they say, it's the WASP elites who sell out their country and advocate multiculturalism and 'diversity'. WASPs invented multiculturalism, I have heard from various people.
First, the question I ask in regard to the WASPs in America is: are you referring to the WASP elites, such as the vaunted 'Boston Brahmins' or the old WASP money in the Northeast? How many of them are there? Do they represent all WASP Americans? I would say not; they are a relatively small group of people, unrepresentative of the vast majority of Americans of mostly Anglo-Saxon Protestant origin. I question how much actual power they have over events in America, despite the fact that there are wealthy and prominent WASPs. I don't see any real center of power there. We might say that historically, WASPs from the original New England colonies tended to become liberal in a religious sense as they became Transcendentalists. They tended to be universalists, and to be in the vanguard of radical ideas like woman suffrage and abolition and what we would now call the 'social gospel', the attempt to create heaven on earth by good works and good intentions. I say that tendency has caused mischief and damage. Those who followed that philosophy were the forerunners of today's meddlesome, self-righteous liberals. They paved the way for today's leftism, multiculturalism, and political correctness. I say this with some chagrin, since many of my ancestors and kinsmen from New England were, in fact, agitators for these liberal programs. Name a liberal cause of the time, and you can find some of my kinfolks from New England at the forefront of it. I can't say I am proud of that.
There may be a grain of truth, too, in the charge that Britain and America were more prone to liberalism, given that Britain seems to have more serious problems than say, France or Germany with immigration and multiculturalism. But did the British, or Anglo-Saxons, invent multiculturalism? I see no evidence of that. The one factor that might have predisposed both the UK and America to adopt a 'multiculturalist' outlook is that America has been traditionally a receiving country for immigration -- although it is not a 'nation of immigrants'. However we have accepted immigrants from many nations, and at first, maybe the 'melting pot' metaphor was a way of trying to put a positive spin on the mixture of peoples in this country. Similarly Britain was a nation which was the great imperial power, with an empire on which the sun never set. Having had a vast empire which included people of many races and nations, they may have developed a tolerance for 'diversity' that other nations without such an empire never developed.
Multiculturalism, I think, was an afterthought. When America began to receive heterogeneous immigration, from Southern and Eastern Europe and from Asia, for example, there was an attempt to concoct a way to make others feel included, at the very least, so as to minimize strife and conflict. What began as a well-intentioned gesture to make new immigrants feel a part of our country became entrenched, and the polite myths about the wonderful 'contributions' made by every ethnic group were taken as gospel, and exaggerated further. Now each group, no matter how insignificant in the larger scheme of things, demands its place in the sun, demands credit for some supposed accomplishment. And by now, we are used to acquiescing. Our ancestors, bless their hearts, had little idea of the monster they created in the 'melting pot' myth.
So the myth of pluralism, and of America as the 'first universal nation' was invented, and the emphasis placed on adherence to a creed, a vague set of beliefs about 'freedom', democracy, and equality. When leftism became powerful, then dominant in the 60s, the existing American national values and myths were co-opted and the meanings thereof given a subtle twist, so as to clothe leftist ideas in traditional American clothes. It worked. So now, we have changeling ideas, such as leftist egalitarianism, dressed up as the founding values. Diane Alden, in this essay on Political Correctness, said
Once upon a time in a different America, we all knew that communism was a despicable philosophy that was used to condemn billions to slavery, poverty and oppression. It was clearly the enemy of Western tradition, particularly Christianity and Judaism, as well as all the great world religions. The enemy was definable and therefore the plan of action against it possible.
Currently, the followers of the Western tradition have no such luck. PC is winning the minds of kids in schools and perverting the understanding of recent immigrants to the United States. It destroys the intent of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It takes our liberty and replaces it with the new totalitarianism couched in religious terms. It gives back a black hole that will suck up the best and brightest and destroy everything it touches.''
Leftism and its political correctness has, to use a worn cliche of our time, 'hijacked' the institutions and the high ideals of our culture, and perverted them into a caricature of their original meanings. This has happened with Christianity, as a liberalized, politicized, watery version of the faith of our fathers has been substituted for the real thing. And it is happening, or has happened, with our American founding ideals.
The phrase 'all men are created equal' has been stretched beyond anything Thomas Jefferson ever imagined or intended, I am sure.
Here is a good encapsulation of what is wrong with political correctness, taken from a lengthy essay here:
Spinoza said: 'Every man is by indefeasible natural right the master of his own thoughts.' The great fallacy of monolithic doctrines like political correctness is that they seek to eliminate an important step in human cognition: the dialogue with the self, the act of dialectical mastication that allows us to absorb and process experience, to direct and enable our own moral lives. Only in the inviolable sanctuary of the soul, in the sacred act of self-communion, can man realize his own transcendence and salvation. Politically correct speech and thought provide us with the predigested morality of self-appointed ideologues, the profane consensus of mediocre minds, in lieu of our own common sense and the collective wisdom of the ages.''
Note: I offer a few links below, which might provide some more food for thought or fodder for discussion:
Philip Atkinson on The Origins and Nature of Political Correctness
Frank Ellis on the Soviet Origins of Political Correctness
A leftist academic credits John Winthrop with laying the foundations of multiculturalism
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Diversity=division
Mexican protesters take to the streets in Irving, Texas:
More than 1,000 protest Irving's rise in deportations
Brandon Formby
As usual, the ratio of pro-invasion marchers to pro-borders marchers is not in our favor.
And what a novelty: imagine this article, any article on immigration, being written by someone named Brandon Formby; are the diversity nazis falling down on the job? Couldn't they find someone named Jose or Juan or Maria to write the article? Isn't it some kind of ironclad rule that only 'diverse' reporters can write about their people? At any rate, the article has plenty of information to make an American's blood boil.
Listen to what one Hector Flores, a 'leader in Irving's Hispanic community' says: 'We need to raise our voice and we need to ask for changes about the things we don't like here,' says Hector. All I have to say to Hector is that if he is not a legal resident of this country, he has no right to 'ask for changes' about the things he doesn't like. He has the right to a ticket home, and that's it. The fact that we tolerate the Hector Floreses in this country and their arrogant demands is only a sad testament to our spinelessness, especially the invertebrate politicians who are whoring after Hispanic votes.
Maybe Hector, in his ignorance, doesn't know that American citizens in Mexico, even those legally resident there, have no political rights. They have no right to peaceably assemble or protest or petition the government for any kind of 'right' or concession. Doing so will get them summarily deported. If Hector Flores and his hermanos had any sense of fair play they would not demand the rights that they don't reciprocate. But I truly and honestly believe that the concept of fairness and reciprocity is a Western thing, and it is not a quality non-Westerners comprehend nor desire to comprehend.
The fuss in Irving over deportations of 'criminal illegals', seemingly a hair-splitting distinction between those who merely broke our laws to enter, and those who are caught committing more crimes once in our country, is of course marked by race-baiting:
Ms Reyes, sounds like an American-born Hispanic. Shame on her. She, even though a college student, thinks that anybody can come here in violation of our laws as long as they are coming here to work. Who told these people that being 'workers' enables them to flout our laws? Do these people actually believe such nonsense, or are just being disingenuous? If they believe it, they must be mentally challenged. No college student should believe something so idiotic.
All the elements are here: the overwrought rhetoric about 'families being torn apart' and people being snatched away from their crying children. Enough; they are free to take their children home with them. Do they expect anyone to believe that the illegals' children are forcibly kept here in the United States? Do they believe that themselves? How ignorant are they? Why don't the journalists who write this nonsense challenge those statements?
As you read the whole article, you will read the usual disclaimers: 'we're not racists' and all the variations thereof. If only people could learn to stop playing that game, and stop being defensive. It only draws us into their trap.
One more note on this article: there have been rumors of violence at this protest, but the article mentions only fleetingly that a couple of people, presumably Anglo-Americans, were arrested, but provides no further details.
This article, from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, provides scant details, but does mention that there were 'shouting matches' and scuffles, without saying who did what. The photo at the link shows a Hispanic-looking man 'in the face' of an Anglo. But as usual, the pro-enforcement Americans appear to have been the only ones arrested.
I think the anger is boiling over in many places, and the media are doing a fairly efficient job of suppressing any mention of violence and skirmishes. But if this immigration wave is not stopped, and the hostility continues to escalate, they will have to work harder to downplay and conceal the clashes that will be inevitable.
More than 1,000 protest Irving's rise in deportations
Brandon Formby
Angered over a record number of recent deportations in Irving, more than 1,000 protesters waved U.S. flags and chanted "We are America" as they rallied Wednesday night at City Hall.
Demonstrators called for Irving officials to put a moratorium on turning over suspected illegal immigrants to federal officials until immigration laws are reformed nationally. They also urged people to call Mayor Herbert Gears and ask him to stop deporting people from the city's jail.
"We need to raise our voice and we need to ask for changes about the things we don't like here," said Hector Flores, a leader in Irving's Hispanic community.
A few people who support the deportations carried signs in favor of the illegal immigration enforcement.''
As usual, the ratio of pro-invasion marchers to pro-borders marchers is not in our favor.
And what a novelty: imagine this article, any article on immigration, being written by someone named Brandon Formby; are the diversity nazis falling down on the job? Couldn't they find someone named Jose or Juan or Maria to write the article? Isn't it some kind of ironclad rule that only 'diverse' reporters can write about their people? At any rate, the article has plenty of information to make an American's blood boil.
Listen to what one Hector Flores, a 'leader in Irving's Hispanic community' says: 'We need to raise our voice and we need to ask for changes about the things we don't like here,' says Hector. All I have to say to Hector is that if he is not a legal resident of this country, he has no right to 'ask for changes' about the things he doesn't like. He has the right to a ticket home, and that's it. The fact that we tolerate the Hector Floreses in this country and their arrogant demands is only a sad testament to our spinelessness, especially the invertebrate politicians who are whoring after Hispanic votes.
Maybe Hector, in his ignorance, doesn't know that American citizens in Mexico, even those legally resident there, have no political rights. They have no right to peaceably assemble or protest or petition the government for any kind of 'right' or concession. Doing so will get them summarily deported. If Hector Flores and his hermanos had any sense of fair play they would not demand the rights that they don't reciprocate. But I truly and honestly believe that the concept of fairness and reciprocity is a Western thing, and it is not a quality non-Westerners comprehend nor desire to comprehend.
The fuss in Irving over deportations of 'criminal illegals', seemingly a hair-splitting distinction between those who merely broke our laws to enter, and those who are caught committing more crimes once in our country, is of course marked by race-baiting:
Opponents of the program say Irving police are unfairly targeting Hispanics. They say that many Hispanics have become afraid of police and that families are being torn apart as parents are deported thousands of miles from their children.
"This isn't justice," said Deyla Reyes, a Northlake College student. "We need to stop this. These people have come here to work. We cannot support this program."
Ms Reyes, sounds like an American-born Hispanic. Shame on her. She, even though a college student, thinks that anybody can come here in violation of our laws as long as they are coming here to work. Who told these people that being 'workers' enables them to flout our laws? Do these people actually believe such nonsense, or are just being disingenuous? If they believe it, they must be mentally challenged. No college student should believe something so idiotic.
All the elements are here: the overwrought rhetoric about 'families being torn apart' and people being snatched away from their crying children. Enough; they are free to take their children home with them. Do they expect anyone to believe that the illegals' children are forcibly kept here in the United States? Do they believe that themselves? How ignorant are they? Why don't the journalists who write this nonsense challenge those statements?
As you read the whole article, you will read the usual disclaimers: 'we're not racists' and all the variations thereof. If only people could learn to stop playing that game, and stop being defensive. It only draws us into their trap.
One more note on this article: there have been rumors of violence at this protest, but the article mentions only fleetingly that a couple of people, presumably Anglo-Americans, were arrested, but provides no further details.
At least two supporters of illegal immigration enforcement were taken away in handcuffs, but police declined to say why.
One woman who was handcuffed was accused of striking people at the rally. The woman, who declined to identify herself, made obscene gestures at TV cameras and kicked at reporters before she was handcuffed.''
This article, from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, provides scant details, but does mention that there were 'shouting matches' and scuffles, without saying who did what. The photo at the link shows a Hispanic-looking man 'in the face' of an Anglo. But as usual, the pro-enforcement Americans appear to have been the only ones arrested.
I think the anger is boiling over in many places, and the media are doing a fairly efficient job of suppressing any mention of violence and skirmishes. But if this immigration wave is not stopped, and the hostility continues to escalate, they will have to work harder to downplay and conceal the clashes that will be inevitable.
Tancredo on the Moslem threat in Europe
Gandalf at Up Pompeii cites an interview with Tom Tancredo by a Danish journalist in which Tancredo prescribes the deportation of all Moslems in Europe.
Gandalf links to what appears to be a very leftist blog (which I prefer not to link to directly) as the source of information on the interview. The interview was apparently for a Danish TV series called 'Clement in America' and there may be a video link at some point, but as yet there is not.
Interested readers should check out Gandalf's post at the link above.
If Tancredo did say this, good for him. As usual he is the lone voice in the wilderness among our politicians. Invariably after I say that, someone will always say 'yes, and that's why he can never be elected.' However I am of the belief that we should never say never. Things change, and if we believe that a Tancredo can never be elected, then we may as well say good-bye to America and the West, and just close up shop.
Our ancestors, thank God, did not have that mindset. They created this country in defiance of the odds.
Gandalf links to what appears to be a very leftist blog (which I prefer not to link to directly) as the source of information on the interview. The interview was apparently for a Danish TV series called 'Clement in America' and there may be a video link at some point, but as yet there is not.
Interested readers should check out Gandalf's post at the link above.
If Tancredo did say this, good for him. As usual he is the lone voice in the wilderness among our politicians. Invariably after I say that, someone will always say 'yes, and that's why he can never be elected.' However I am of the belief that we should never say never. Things change, and if we believe that a Tancredo can never be elected, then we may as well say good-bye to America and the West, and just close up shop.
Our ancestors, thank God, did not have that mindset. They created this country in defiance of the odds.
Samuel Adams
One of our 'Lighthouses in a foggy world': Samuel Adams, born September 27, 1722, in Boston, Massachusetts.He was a Revolutionary political leader and one of the most prolific writers on politics in his generation.
He was one of the organizers of the Boston Tea Party, a founder of the Sons of Liberty, and was one of the first voices to call for independence from Britain, one of the others being Patrick Henry.
He was a delegate to the Continental Congress between 1774 and 1781.
He was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence.
Quotes: A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy...While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader...If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.''
''How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!"
''He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections."
''He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections."
The Republicans or the Republic? Part II
Why I am not a Republican
Jerome Corsi writes about his disaffection from the Republican Party, and about his differences with the Jed Babbin, the new editor of Human Events. Babbin, it seems, chided Corsi for his series of articles outlining the North American Union plan. Babbin derided the idea of the NAU as 'black helicopter conspiracy themes.'
Corsi says:
So now Corsi is no longer with Human Events, because he wouldn't toe the line and soft-pedal the NAU story? The apologists for the supposedly non-existent -- or benign -- NAU seem to be very determined to stop discussion on the subject, or, failing that, to whitewash the project. Those who write about it or who take a negative view towards the NAU are likely to be assailed by name-callers on the big GOP webforums. I've blogged about this before; supposedly the White House and/or the RNC have assigned operatives to go on the internet and quash any criticism of the NAU. That seems to be overkill if the project is really a figment of some paranoiac's imagination, or if it is merely a benign trade agreement, as claimed.
So Corsi has been a target, as the most visible and vocal journalist raising questions about the plan.
Corsi laments the fact that the Rockefeller Republicans have assumed control of the party, and Human Events, under Babbin's editorship, will become increasingly a mouthpiece for the Republican Party.
Corsi mentions the fall-back argument used by Babbin and the others that failing to support the GOP will guarantee a Hillary presidency. That empty argument is all they have, and they think that it will suffice to scare many conservatives into voting GOP, even if it means voting for a globalist, CFR candidate -- which, as Corsi mentions, all of the so-called top tier candidates are.
I am positive that the GOP leadership and their true believer followers are thrilled that Hillary is the likely nominee, because the threat of Hillary in the White House is the only 'argument' they have to convince conservatives to vote for whichever of the pathetic 'top tier' candidates is opposing her.
Sorry, GOP, but I agree with Corsi and with Richard Viguerie that this is not enough. A vote for any of the preferred GOP candidates is a vote for more globalism and a vote against real conservative policies. If that is all the Republican Party is able, or willing, to offer us, then the Republican Party has outlived its usefulness.
A political party is only a means to an end, not an end in itself, and if the GOP no longer stands for conservative ideas and traditional America, then it needs to go, and make way for a real conservative party.
Jerome Corsi writes about his disaffection from the Republican Party, and about his differences with the Jed Babbin, the new editor of Human Events. Babbin, it seems, chided Corsi for his series of articles outlining the North American Union plan. Babbin derided the idea of the NAU as 'black helicopter conspiracy themes.'
Corsi says:
These Human Events articles were widely popular, in some weeks last year constituting as many as two or three of the 10 most read articles published that week on the Human Events website.
Yet, today, Babbin has even removed my name from the list of columnists published on Human Events and I’ve transitioned to becoming a full-time staff reporter at WND.''
So now Corsi is no longer with Human Events, because he wouldn't toe the line and soft-pedal the NAU story? The apologists for the supposedly non-existent -- or benign -- NAU seem to be very determined to stop discussion on the subject, or, failing that, to whitewash the project. Those who write about it or who take a negative view towards the NAU are likely to be assailed by name-callers on the big GOP webforums. I've blogged about this before; supposedly the White House and/or the RNC have assigned operatives to go on the internet and quash any criticism of the NAU. That seems to be overkill if the project is really a figment of some paranoiac's imagination, or if it is merely a benign trade agreement, as claimed.
So Corsi has been a target, as the most visible and vocal journalist raising questions about the plan.
Corsi laments the fact that the Rockefeller Republicans have assumed control of the party, and Human Events, under Babbin's editorship, will become increasingly a mouthpiece for the Republican Party.
I also tried to explain to Babbin my view that right now, the Republican Party is controlled by what used to be called the "Rockefeller Wing."
Like David Rockefeller himself, the Rockefeller Wing involves millionaires and billionaires who run multi-national corporations.
Rockefeller Wing Republicans are already beyond borders in their determination to advance their multinational corporations for unbridled profit, whether or not U.S. sovereignty and the middle class are destroyed in the process.
I have reflected that Howard Phillips was probably right when he urged Ronald Reagan to form his own, new political party.
I’m not sure the moral Christians belong in the same party with the Rockefeller Republicans.
At any rate, George W. Bush in his second term seems determined to destroy the Reagan coalition once and for all.
[...]
We would be better off without a Republican Party if having a Republican Party means we continue compromising U.S. sovereignty under this false banner of one-sided trade agreements that have nothing to do with legitimate "free trade."
If Human Events under Babbin’s editorial direction is to become an apologists’ forum for Republican Party true believers, so be it. ''
Corsi mentions the fall-back argument used by Babbin and the others that failing to support the GOP will guarantee a Hillary presidency. That empty argument is all they have, and they think that it will suffice to scare many conservatives into voting GOP, even if it means voting for a globalist, CFR candidate -- which, as Corsi mentions, all of the so-called top tier candidates are.
I am positive that the GOP leadership and their true believer followers are thrilled that Hillary is the likely nominee, because the threat of Hillary in the White House is the only 'argument' they have to convince conservatives to vote for whichever of the pathetic 'top tier' candidates is opposing her.
Sorry, GOP, but I agree with Corsi and with Richard Viguerie that this is not enough. A vote for any of the preferred GOP candidates is a vote for more globalism and a vote against real conservative policies. If that is all the Republican Party is able, or willing, to offer us, then the Republican Party has outlived its usefulness.
A political party is only a means to an end, not an end in itself, and if the GOP no longer stands for conservative ideas and traditional America, then it needs to go, and make way for a real conservative party.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Get ready to be 'reconditioned'
I referred to this news release in an earlier post, and I think it's worth examining more closely, although there is nothing here that will surprise any honest observer of human nature:
New study discovers why few people are devoid of racial bias
Now, the fact that 93 percent of people exhibit what is termed 'racial bias' should be an indication that perhaps it is the default orientation of human beings. Of course I notice that the study seems to have included only white college students. Why is that? Were those who conducted the study wary of testing nonwhites, for fear they would exhibit a level of so-called 'bias' just as high as that of whites? Or perhaps even higher?
And are college students a fair cross-representation of the population? I would say it's well-accepted that college students are more likely to be socially liberal, and liberal on racial issues, than people in general. Young people are more thoroughly indoctrinated into the orthodoxies of our time, in which 'racial bias' or 'racism' are condemned more strongly than any other human tendency.
So if the vast majority of college students exhibit some 'bias', then the percentage might be close to 100 percent among the population at large.
If there are any people who even attempt to be 'colorblind', it is white people; every other group feels free to show ethnocentric pride and an open preference for their own group. Yet whites are consistenly berated for their 'racism.'
These kinds of studies, which tend to provoke a spate of articles from the knee-jerk leftist media, following their 'diversity' mandate of course, are so commonplace that it would seem very difficult to elicit the desired hand-wringing and soul-searching with each such article. The recent turmoil in Jena, and the heated discussion it provoked around the country, showed that there is a law of diminishing returns at work with the race-baiting. The race industry, which includes not only the brazen opportunists like Sharpton and Jackson, but the hack journos who crank out 'racism' stories, and the 'social scientists' who cook up these never-ending studies, must notice that they are not getting the results they used to get. They may find that they are creating a backlash, which has been building for some time now. And when I say backlash, I am not alluding to racist thugs roaming the streets, which picture the media like to invoke in any such context, but the phenomenon of average, law-abiding citizens who are simply fed up with the endless accusations and demands. You can only berate, accuse, and guilt-trip people so much before the accused develop a thicker hide, and refuse to respond to the tried-and-true stimuli.
Most Americans, and I think most white citizens of Western countries, have leaned over backwards, and then some, to accommodate hordes of demanding third-worlders, and have all but given their countries away, as I write this. Most Americans in my experience are scrupulously careful to treat everybody fairly, regardless of color or nationality. No; I take that back. That statement is wrong. Many -- if not most -- Americans are NOT fair as regards racial matters; they show a bias in favor of nonwhites. I have witnessed so many situations, in various parts of this country, wherein an employer, a colleague, a clerk in a retail store or restaurant, or whoever, will show open partiality to a person 'of color'. Sometimes this takes the form of excessive and fulsome politeness and friendliness. Sometimes it consists of giving the minority person the benefit of the doubt, or giving them some extra leeway, bending the rules, so as not to be accused of racism or prejudice. In many cases, the person showing favor to the minority or minorities is doing so not simply to avoid complaints (which complaints seem to occur frequently) but because they truly want to be liked by minorities, particularly black people. Black people have been portrayed in our entertainment and news media for decades in a very flattering fashion, with the result that some whites believe blacks (and to a lesser extent, Mexicans) to be our moral betters: they are the victims, we are the victimizers. Many people would rather identify with the righteous victims than with the wicked oppressors. So there are many white people, especially those whose contact with other races has been minimal or casual, who idealize and romanticize them. On some of the tabloid talk-shows back in the 90s, the guests were white people who dated blacks exclusively, and emulated their styles, speech, and behavior. We see this phenomenon mostly among young people who are searching for an identity, but even among some more mature people.
And we have the phenomenon of whites who will take the side of illegal aliens in demonstrations, to the extent of committing violence against their fellow white Americans, such is the strength of their identification with 'others.'
In all my travels in this country, from Hawaii to the West Coast to the South to the Northeast, I can say I have never seen an instance of outright racial 'hatred' on the part of whites. I have, however, seen such racial hatred directed toward whites: name-calling, threats, verbal abuse, insults, cruel 'jokes', crimes committed against them.
Where are the studies on non-white 'racism' toward whites? Or towards other non-whites, for that matter? If there is serious racial conflict or violence in this country, it seems more likely to be black vs. Hispanic, or either of those groups against whites. Some people are surprised when I mention the black vs. Hispanic riots that have happened in California and elsewhere; the media don't cover these things much. If the violence was white-on-black or on Hispanic, you can be sure it would be the top of the news, and CNN would be running specials about white racism -- which, come to think of it, they do anyway.
Yet according to the psychologists and the media and the government, the real threat is some nebulous 'extreme right' white groups out there, despite the evidence that there is any such organized threat.
But meanwhile, back to the psychobabble:
This all sounds ominous: you can bet that we will be subjected to even more attempts at 'reconditioning' us 'through positive interpersonal experiences' -- now how can they arrange that? Our experiences out there in the real world militate against the rosy rainbow world the politically correct left tries to create. They can't give people 'positive interpersonal experiences' but they can arrange 'exposure to more positive images of Blacks in the media.'
Actually, I don't know if it is possible to create 'more positive images of Blacks in the media.' We already have them in every possible positive role, portrayed in a glowing light. Blacks are always judges, or savvy, streetwise police detectives, or computer experts, star athletes, all-around sages and wise men and women, doctors. They are always cool, hip, funny, smart, witty, confident, in control. So superior to awkward, nerdish whitey.
Blacks are even being depicted in situations in which they almost never were found in reality, such as in cowboy roles. There might have been a handful of black cowboys, somewhere, but they were not a common sight. And then Hollywood, in some of the most absurd casting, puts blacks into settings like medieval England: Morgan Freeman in Robin Hood, for example. There must be some unwritten law that blacks must appear in settings where they never existed in real life. But then I suppose the liberal answer will be to rewrite history and miseducate more young people into believing that there WERE blacks aplenty in medieval England, even hanging out with Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest. I don't doubt that Trevor Phillips' proposed 're-weaving the tapestry of history' will put blacks in medieval England. There have already been absurd claims by Afrocentrists that the Black Prince was actually a black man.
Nowadays, too, Moslems are gaining clout so that terrorists in movies are more likely to be neo-Nazis than Islamic jihadists. I suppose Mexicans are the next group who will claim their 'right' to be portrayed with haloes. We've seen this with the Latino demand to be included in Ken Burns' recent documentary on World War II; the Hispanics claim that they played a much bigger part in the War than they were given credit for, even though they constitued less than 2 percent back then.
As usual, we will give in and humor them in their childish demands, at the expense of our own people's accomplishments. When we are finished redacting the history books to make everybody else feel good, regardless of their actual accomplishments, we will have been reduced to invisibility or insignificance.
But beware of more politically correct 'reconditioning' in our media; they have to 'cure' us of our stubborn 'racism'.
I think these utopian social engineers will find, though, that their conditioning may be backfiring on them, too. Speaking for myself, and others I talk to, people notice this heavy-handed propaganda. It turns people off. It galvanizes us, in some cases, to resist their lies. We are not all so ignorant of history or so oblivious to what we see every day out there in the real world that we are easy marks for their manipulations.
New study discovers why few people are devoid of racial bias
Why are some individuals not prejudiced? That is the question posed by a provocative new study appearing in the September issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors investigate how some individuals are able to avoid prejudicial biases despite the pervasive human tendency to favor one’s own group.
Robert Livingston of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Brian Drwecki of the University of Wisconsin conducted studies that examined white college students who harbored either some or no racial biases. What is remarkable about the findings is that only seven percent did not show any racial bias (as measured by implicit and explicit psychological tests), and that nonbiased individuals differed from biased individuals in a psychologically fundamental way -- they were less likely to form negative affective associations in general.
Now, the fact that 93 percent of people exhibit what is termed 'racial bias' should be an indication that perhaps it is the default orientation of human beings. Of course I notice that the study seems to have included only white college students. Why is that? Were those who conducted the study wary of testing nonwhites, for fear they would exhibit a level of so-called 'bias' just as high as that of whites? Or perhaps even higher?
And are college students a fair cross-representation of the population? I would say it's well-accepted that college students are more likely to be socially liberal, and liberal on racial issues, than people in general. Young people are more thoroughly indoctrinated into the orthodoxies of our time, in which 'racial bias' or 'racism' are condemned more strongly than any other human tendency.
So if the vast majority of college students exhibit some 'bias', then the percentage might be close to 100 percent among the population at large.
If there are any people who even attempt to be 'colorblind', it is white people; every other group feels free to show ethnocentric pride and an open preference for their own group. Yet whites are consistenly berated for their 'racism.'
These kinds of studies, which tend to provoke a spate of articles from the knee-jerk leftist media, following their 'diversity' mandate of course, are so commonplace that it would seem very difficult to elicit the desired hand-wringing and soul-searching with each such article. The recent turmoil in Jena, and the heated discussion it provoked around the country, showed that there is a law of diminishing returns at work with the race-baiting. The race industry, which includes not only the brazen opportunists like Sharpton and Jackson, but the hack journos who crank out 'racism' stories, and the 'social scientists' who cook up these never-ending studies, must notice that they are not getting the results they used to get. They may find that they are creating a backlash, which has been building for some time now. And when I say backlash, I am not alluding to racist thugs roaming the streets, which picture the media like to invoke in any such context, but the phenomenon of average, law-abiding citizens who are simply fed up with the endless accusations and demands. You can only berate, accuse, and guilt-trip people so much before the accused develop a thicker hide, and refuse to respond to the tried-and-true stimuli.
Most Americans, and I think most white citizens of Western countries, have leaned over backwards, and then some, to accommodate hordes of demanding third-worlders, and have all but given their countries away, as I write this. Most Americans in my experience are scrupulously careful to treat everybody fairly, regardless of color or nationality. No; I take that back. That statement is wrong. Many -- if not most -- Americans are NOT fair as regards racial matters; they show a bias in favor of nonwhites. I have witnessed so many situations, in various parts of this country, wherein an employer, a colleague, a clerk in a retail store or restaurant, or whoever, will show open partiality to a person 'of color'. Sometimes this takes the form of excessive and fulsome politeness and friendliness. Sometimes it consists of giving the minority person the benefit of the doubt, or giving them some extra leeway, bending the rules, so as not to be accused of racism or prejudice. In many cases, the person showing favor to the minority or minorities is doing so not simply to avoid complaints (which complaints seem to occur frequently) but because they truly want to be liked by minorities, particularly black people. Black people have been portrayed in our entertainment and news media for decades in a very flattering fashion, with the result that some whites believe blacks (and to a lesser extent, Mexicans) to be our moral betters: they are the victims, we are the victimizers. Many people would rather identify with the righteous victims than with the wicked oppressors. So there are many white people, especially those whose contact with other races has been minimal or casual, who idealize and romanticize them. On some of the tabloid talk-shows back in the 90s, the guests were white people who dated blacks exclusively, and emulated their styles, speech, and behavior. We see this phenomenon mostly among young people who are searching for an identity, but even among some more mature people.
And we have the phenomenon of whites who will take the side of illegal aliens in demonstrations, to the extent of committing violence against their fellow white Americans, such is the strength of their identification with 'others.'
In all my travels in this country, from Hawaii to the West Coast to the South to the Northeast, I can say I have never seen an instance of outright racial 'hatred' on the part of whites. I have, however, seen such racial hatred directed toward whites: name-calling, threats, verbal abuse, insults, cruel 'jokes', crimes committed against them.
Where are the studies on non-white 'racism' toward whites? Or towards other non-whites, for that matter? If there is serious racial conflict or violence in this country, it seems more likely to be black vs. Hispanic, or either of those groups against whites. Some people are surprised when I mention the black vs. Hispanic riots that have happened in California and elsewhere; the media don't cover these things much. If the violence was white-on-black or on Hispanic, you can be sure it would be the top of the news, and CNN would be running specials about white racism -- which, come to think of it, they do anyway.
Yet according to the psychologists and the media and the government, the real threat is some nebulous 'extreme right' white groups out there, despite the evidence that there is any such organized threat.
But meanwhile, back to the psychobabble:
The results suggest that “whether someone is prejudiced or not is linked to their cognitive propensity to resist negative affective conditioning,” according to the authors. Thus, reducing prejudice may require more than simply adopting egalitarian values. Instead, such change may require reconditioning of the negative associations that people hold.
“Just as it is difficult to change visceral reactions to aversive foods (e.g., lima beans) through sheer force of will,” writes Livingston, “it may also be difficult to change visceral attitudes toward racial groups by acknowledging that prejudice is wrong and wanting to change.” The authors argue that although negative affect cannot be reduced by reason alone, it could be reconditioned through positive interpersonal experiences or exposure to more positive images of Blacks in the media.''
[Emphasis mine]
This all sounds ominous: you can bet that we will be subjected to even more attempts at 'reconditioning' us 'through positive interpersonal experiences' -- now how can they arrange that? Our experiences out there in the real world militate against the rosy rainbow world the politically correct left tries to create. They can't give people 'positive interpersonal experiences' but they can arrange 'exposure to more positive images of Blacks in the media.'
Actually, I don't know if it is possible to create 'more positive images of Blacks in the media.' We already have them in every possible positive role, portrayed in a glowing light. Blacks are always judges, or savvy, streetwise police detectives, or computer experts, star athletes, all-around sages and wise men and women, doctors. They are always cool, hip, funny, smart, witty, confident, in control. So superior to awkward, nerdish whitey.
Blacks are even being depicted in situations in which they almost never were found in reality, such as in cowboy roles. There might have been a handful of black cowboys, somewhere, but they were not a common sight. And then Hollywood, in some of the most absurd casting, puts blacks into settings like medieval England: Morgan Freeman in Robin Hood, for example. There must be some unwritten law that blacks must appear in settings where they never existed in real life. But then I suppose the liberal answer will be to rewrite history and miseducate more young people into believing that there WERE blacks aplenty in medieval England, even hanging out with Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest. I don't doubt that Trevor Phillips' proposed 're-weaving the tapestry of history' will put blacks in medieval England. There have already been absurd claims by Afrocentrists that the Black Prince was actually a black man.
Nowadays, too, Moslems are gaining clout so that terrorists in movies are more likely to be neo-Nazis than Islamic jihadists. I suppose Mexicans are the next group who will claim their 'right' to be portrayed with haloes. We've seen this with the Latino demand to be included in Ken Burns' recent documentary on World War II; the Hispanics claim that they played a much bigger part in the War than they were given credit for, even though they constitued less than 2 percent back then.
As usual, we will give in and humor them in their childish demands, at the expense of our own people's accomplishments. When we are finished redacting the history books to make everybody else feel good, regardless of their actual accomplishments, we will have been reduced to invisibility or insignificance.
But beware of more politically correct 'reconditioning' in our media; they have to 'cure' us of our stubborn 'racism'.
I think these utopian social engineers will find, though, that their conditioning may be backfiring on them, too. Speaking for myself, and others I talk to, people notice this heavy-handed propaganda. It turns people off. It galvanizes us, in some cases, to resist their lies. We are not all so ignorant of history or so oblivious to what we see every day out there in the real world that we are easy marks for their manipulations.
Heritage for sale
Our heritage up for sale:
Only copy of Magna Carta in private hands to be sold in New York
by Arifa Akbar
The Magna Carta, which set out the most basic principles of English law, is recognised as one of the most important documents in existence. So rare are the surviving 17 versions of the manuscript, drawn up by King John in 1215, that all but two reside in Britain's most hallowed institutions, including the British Library and Salisbury Cathedral.
But yesterday, in an extraordinary announcement, Sotheby's revealed that the only copy of the Magna Carta in the world to remain in private hands will be auctioned in New York this December. It dates from 1297 – the year the final versions of the charter were ratified – and it is likely to be the only version ever to be sold.
As one of only two versions outside England – the other belongs to Australia – the sale, which even by conservative estimates is expected to fetch £15m, has been hailed as momentous. David Redden, vice-chairman of Sotheby's, said that, as "the most important charter in the world", it had become a worldwide phenomenon. "The document symbolises mankind's eternal quest for freedom," he said. "It is a vessel for everyone's hopes and fears; it tells us how the concept of freedom in law began. If we go back to find the seed from which it all comes back to, the Magna Carta has had a huge impact which resonates today."
There is something sad about the sale of so symbolic an article, to those of us in the Anglosphere. I hope that it will go to some reputable organization or group who will preserve it and keep it against the day when all of our heritage may be destroyed or effaced. It's happening. Those who could never in a million years have created our civilization are now having their revenge by seeking to rewrite history and obliterate that which can't be spun to favor themselves.
...Claire Breay, head of medieval and earlier manuscripts at the British Library, said it was of great national and international importance. "Its significance was international because of the impact it had in other countries, and it has echoes in the American Bill of Rights as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That's why it still gets cited by lawyers and quoted by politicians," she said.
I am sorry, but Ms Breay is wrong to suggest that it means as much to some third-worlder as it does to us in the Anglosphere. For us, it is a visible, tangible token of the greatness of our ancestors and of their ideas, the like of which the rest of the world has never been able to approach.
As for likening it to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is very different in spirit, although liberal scholars claim that the U.N. document is merely a logical next step in the evolution of 'freedom' and 'rights.'
Jeane Kirkpatrick may have been accurate in calling the United Nations' document as a 'letter to Santa Claus.'
But in our age, the ideas of the past are being pressed into service to justify today's radical left ideas such as multiculturalism, and the universal 'right to immigrate' which is found in the U.N. declaration.
' Article 14. (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.'
And ironically, the Runnymede Trust, named for the site of the signing of the Magna Carta, seems to be a leftist/globalist/multiculturalist organization.
The Runnymede Trust is an independent policy research organisation focusing on equality and justice through the promotion of a successful multi-ethnic society. Founded as a Charitable Educational Trust, Runnymede has a long track record in policy research, working in close collaboration with eminent thinkers and policy makers in the public, private and voluntary sectors. We believe that the way ahead lies in building effective partnerships, and we are continually developing these with the voluntary sector, the government, local authorities and companies in the UK and Europe. We stimulate debate and suggest forward-looking strategies in areas of public policy such as education, the criminal justice system, employment and citizenship justice system, employment and citizenship.''
Since 1968, the date of Runnymede's foundation, we have worked to establish and maintain a positive image of what it means to live affirmatively within a society that is both multi-ethnic and culturally diverse. Runnymede continues to speak with a thoughtful and independent public voice on these issues today.
How sad. What would the Magna Carta barons or King John think of what is being done to their country today?
'Who controls the past...'
'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.' - George Orwell, 1984
British history 'needs rewrite'
By Brian Wheeler
Political reporter, BBC News, at the Labour conference
British history should be rewritten to make it "more inclusive", says Trevor Phillips, the head of the new human rights and equality commission.
He said Muslims were also part of the national story and "sometimes we have to go back into the tapestry and insert some threads that were lost".
He quoted the example of the Spanish Armada, which was held up by the Turks at the request of Queen Elizabeth I.
"It was the Turks who saved us," Mr Phillips told a Labour fringe meeting.
Let's use our heritage to rewrite that story so it is truly inclusive... so we have an identity which binds us in the stormy times we are going to have in the next century.''
Mr Phillips said he had also been persuaded of the need for a written constitution, saying the UK needed to be "more explicit in our understanding about how we treat each other".
He said population changes and immigration were happening at unprecedented rate and there was "no going back".
So it was no longer enough to assume people would inherit the values which bound the country together.
[...]
"We have to have a more explicit set of understandings which we can all share about how we treat each other and we talk to each other and they have to be based on real values.
"I think the prime minister is right to talk about values but I think what is important is not the abstract values. Freedom is shared by all sorts of people."
If there was a written constitution it would have to be "an expression which is native and right for us".
[...]
He said the abolition of the slave trade, for example, could be retold as being part of the English radical tradition.''
"Part of the job of heritage is to cognitize - give physical existence - to that national story.''
So here we see the actual ongoing process of trying to give birth to a 'proposition nation', a nation formed on the basis of some cobbled-together, 'inclusive' national 'story.' And the process ain't pretty.
The use of the word 'story' is rather telling; when I was a child, and my parents doubted some tall tale I related to them, they would say 'are you telling me a story'? For a long time, in my mind, the word 'story' signified a falsehood, a concocted deception, a whopper, as well as meaning a fairy tale from one of my beloved books. Such seems to be the meaning of the term as Phillips is using it here.
Britain does not need a 'national story'; it has a history, a factual history, which has been known, recorded, and honored for many centuries. It does not need a fractured fairy tale concocted of bits and pieces of multicultural confabulations, all with the intention of making outsiders feel 'included' and respected. Even worse is Phillips shameful attempt to credit Moslems with having saved England in the days of Elizabeth I.
I do hope the British people, and by that I mean the rightful heirs of Britain, the descendants of the historic people of that island, will refuse to let their history be rewritten in the service of leftist propagandizing. It is even worse than mere propagandizing; it amounts to eradicating the real history of a people and the record of their considerable accomplishments. It is an act of historical 'ethnic cleansing.'
Some might ask why an American should care. First, anyone who cares about truth and about justice should care. Secondly, I care because Britain's history includes the lives of many of my ancestors. Until the 17th century, the majority of my ancestors lived in Britain, so their history is also mine, as it is for many Americans of British descent.
Here is the Telegraph's version, with a comment thread following. The comments are very heartening, because at least when I read the thread, there were many irate comments. The British people haven't been completely subjugated, if the comments are any indication. And in case the comments have been edited since I read the thread, here are the first two:
Mr Phillips,
There is no "us" with you and my benighted English people. You are not "us". Rewriting history won't make you "us". I totally reject you.
Posted by Guessedworker on September 25, 2007 10:38 PM
Report this comment
I love trevor phillips. No one else left with that much balsiness in British Society. Pity he's out for revenge against the Brits,and their history.
You cant change history.Only suppress it Trevor. Full marks for cheek though.
Posted by Big Bill on September 25, 2007 10:31 PM
I agree with the commenters quoted above.
On a related note, the BBC website has a thread soliciting suggestions for a new motto for Britain. Most of the suggestions were silly, but here are a couple of ironic ones:
'Rachel Fox' suggests 'We welcome one and all.'
Simon Rooke suggests 'Magnus frater spectat te - Big Brother is watching you
Christian Cook suggests 'Mostly harmless.'
Truly, I hope this multicultural madness will not continue; maybe the sheer excesses of the left will lead to some kind of awakening. All of us in the West are under siege, and before we can stop the onslaught, it must first be recognized.
''For history is to the nation as memory is to the individual.'' - Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)