Worth reading

I've been intending to write something about the Obama candidacy and the cult of personality which has mushroomed around him. But there are already so many good pieces being written that I can do no more than point you to some of the more interesting and perceptive ones I've come across. So for your consideration -- if you haven't already read them:

John S. Bolton at The Open City blog and his brief piece The Obama Followership: Anti-Caucasianism as Holiness and Redemption.

Then, from David Yeagley at BadEagle.com, Jig's Up: The Real Obama

(That's right. The jig's up. Hey, if national news commentators and politicians can freely and repeatedly use the phrase "off the reservation" whenever they present any questionable idea about anything, then I can use an old Southern expression that means some crook's been caught in the act. If the world is blissfully unaware of American Indian feelings, then I am delightfully conscious of their hypocritical reactions to my words--and their inferior polemic. )

UPDATE: Obama tied to William Ayers, anti-American terrorist of the '60s. See Jonah Goldberg, and Politico.

More and more news is coming out about Barak Hussein Obama (may his name be changed). He is not the innocent "nobody," coming out of nowhere, that all the naive people and manipulative media have thought. He is a calculated puppet of larger Third World forces. At least, to all appearances.[...]

The point is, Barak Hussein Obama (may his name be changed) has the kind of close connections to Third World shadow figures that make him totally suspicious--especially since he is marketing his Third World name Barak Hussein Obama (may his name be changed). His loyalty to the United States of America is utterly untrustworthy--as is that of all socialists, Marxists, Leftists, liberals, and many Democrats. And this point, we even have to question many Republicans about their values as well. Nationhood is up for grabs these days, since most people have no working concept of what a nation is, how it comes about, why it exists, and how to preserve it. With people like George Soros preaching that nationhood is "tribalism," a thing of the past that needs to be eliminated, is there any wonder why so many ignorant, naive Americans 'cathart' their ideological frustrations on a fringe foreigner with an African father, who poses as an American Negro? Obama validates their confusion. Obama focuses their impotence.

It's an ancient hunting tactic: confuse the animal, and it is weakened in its own response to your attack. In a way, America is a weakened, crazed animal, confused by competing ideologies, Third World values, one world globalism pawned off as the solution by power hungry men. America is psychologically suffering, and the Third World icon--Barak Hussein Obama (may his name be changed--inshallah) appears as the savior! What a script. What a fateful coincidence. A convergence of sociological inevitabilities.

Read the whole thing at the link above.

Steve Sailer also has an amusing bit about James Watson's support for Obama here.


I have not had anything to say about the passing of William F. Buckley Jr. I came to conservatism late, after a long dalliance with the left like many people of my generation, and I knew of Buckley only what I saw on his TV appearances, such as the famous 'debates' which pitted him against Gore Vidal during the hot summer of 1968, and the riots at the Democrat Convention in Chicago. But by the time I came to conservatism, or came back, truly, to the old American ideals I was brought up with, Buckley had, to all appearances, dropped out of political life and remained at the margins.

Reading the comments on his passing by some who did know him leaves the reader with feelings of confusion: are the glowing tributes such as this one by Taki the 'true' picture of Buckley, or is this one, by Peter Brimelow, a more truthful portrayal? Both men knew him and interacted with him. Isn't it interesting how someone can, wittingly or unwittingly, present such a different face to different people? It's one of those mysteries of life and human nature, seemingly. The truth is probably a composite of the various different perspectives, or perhaps we all leave this world essentially unknown to all but a very few who see our truer selves.

Conserving what?

Is conservatism worth conserving?

A recurring subject on this blog has been the state of conservatism, and what conservatism actually means these days. It's a commonplace observation now that there are many conflicting and contradictory viewpoints which are included under the label 'conservative'. The contradictions have become ever more glaringly obvious during the present Presidential campaign, in which the term 'conservative' is used to describe a gamut of views from those of John McCain to Tom Tancredo to Ron Paul. How can such a disparate group of people be described as conservative while still preserving any kind of fixed definition of conservatism?

There is quite a spectrum of viewpoints there.

Now we have the various shades of 'conservatism': neoconservatism (whose advocates often vociferously deny, first, that there is such a thing as neoconservatism, and second, that they themselves are neoconservatives), paleoconservatives (many of whom also reject that label) and 'traditionalists'.

Lately it has seemed to me that 'traditionalists' are also an ill-defined group, being divided among the more mainstream Republicans (who may oppose illegal immigration and multiculturalism as well as the Iraq war), and those who are closer to the paleoconservative viewpoint, but who may dissent from the paleos on issues like the Middle East or social issues.

The last few years for me have been a journey away from the Republican mainstream. This shifting of opinions on my part had mostly to do with the immigration issue and the national question, and later, with the Iraq war and interventionism in general.

One conclusion that was inescapable for me is that conservatism as it stands today is in the business of conserving yesterday's liberalism. That observation is not original with me; others have noted it, including R.L. Dabney in the 19th century. It is even more true today than it was in his day.

American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom.'' - Robert L. Dabney, Discussions, Vol. 4 [1897].

So how can we respond to this 'loss of savor' within conservatism? Can we rediscover the Original Scriptures of conservatism like Hilkiah the high priest finding the forgotten book of the Law in II Kings ? That would make it easy; if only we had a Bible of conservatism to keep us on the straight and narrow, to keep us true and on target. But the problem is, 'conservatism' is not an ideology and it is not a set of dogmas or a rigid group of precepts. Conservatism is always particular to a time and place and people. It's about conserving the true and the classical and the traditional, the time-honored, within a particular civilization and its heritage.

As I observe life, I notice that more and more, it seems we really did begin anew in the post-counterculture era, after the late 60s and 70s. True, we didn't suddenly throw out the calendar and decree a new beginning officially as did the revolutionaries in 18th century France. But our world did change then, and it was done rather suddenly in many cases but very gradually in others, so that we've scarcely noticed how very different our world is from what it was before the 60s Revolution. And we as a people and as a culture have changed considerably. We have all become, to some degree or another, accepting of the post-60s liberal and radical innovations in our way of life and our behavior.

I am a keen watcher of people, and what I see around me, even among 'conservatives', is a country of people who are children of the counterculture in many respects. A lot of the old traditions which lent some gentility to daily life: social niceties, etiquette, chivalry (which means far more than opening doors for ladies) decorum, restraint. All these things are conspicuously missing in our society.

The old America had certain ways of doing things, and certain rules, often unspoken, that acted as a social lubricant, minimizing friction between people. There was a hierarchy in society, and our liberal egalitarian age rebels against any hint of hierarchies. But it used to be that one's elders were respected, as were authority figures in general. Differences between the sexes were acknowledged and adjusted for accordingly. Children were taught to honor their parents and elders.

Now we are all rank egalitarians; women and men are expected to behave the same, and we indulge in this pretense that women are the equals of men in all respects, including bodily strength and size. Gone are most of the displays of courtesy like titles before names: Mr. or Mrs. or Miss. College students and even high school students call their teachers by their first names; the teachers seem mostly flattered by this display of familiarity; I think it helps them maintain an illusion that they are still young, and that their students are their peers and friends.

Back in the 1970s, after Nixon made his famous trip to China and normalized relations with the Communist regime there, we were deluged with images of life in Communist China. One of the striking things to a Westerner, at least to me, was the fact that the Chinese people we saw in the pictures of the teeming cities of China was their uniformity. The men all wore the 'Mao jackets' and caps; the women, too, wore some kind of drab proletarian uniform-style garb. Everybody dressed the same. You could see no distinctions in their dress to indicate any kind of class distinctions, much less individual differences.

Now, of course, China is much more Westernized in outward aspects, at least, but oddly we in the West have begun to follow the example of Mao-era China, voluntarily donning drab proletarian-style clothes which look very uniform-like. Nondescript shirts and jackets, jeans, and athletic shoes -- even the old folks with walkers or canes are decked out in The Uniform: running shoes and jeans. We see the same style of clothing everywhere: shopping, going to the theatre or to a concert or even to church: jeans, running shoes, shapeless clothes.

The 70s brought the 'unisex' trend in which men and women increasingly dressed alike. This trend has not gone away. We seem to be determined to erase or level out all the visible differences among us. And now, the old dress much as their middle-aged children do. It used to be that old people had their own distinctive style which was always appropriate to their age and station. Nowadays there are more 60-year-olds dressing like 30-year-olds.

Class differences, generational differences, sex differences, all these distinctions seem to be played down in the New America, at least in our outward appearance.

Now, some will say 'but clothes are superficial; clothes don't make the man (or woman)'. It's true, they don't, but clothes certainly reflect our priorities. And it seems we are moving more towards uniformity and egalitarianism, judging by the way we present ourselves.

And I think it's no accident that there is less respect for age, sex, and authority now than there was in the Old America.

The decline in civility is a problem that is visible everywhere we go; people seem to have hair-trigger tempers and a barely-concealed hostility towards others in too many situations. Old America was not like this.

Post-60s America is not the same place, if we look at society and human interaction, as it was before. The skeptic will answer that nothing stays the same; each generation differs from the one preceding it, and from the one following. It's true that change is the one constant in this world, but does that mean that we have to accept change willy-nilly, regardless of whether it's beneficial or destructive? No; being a 'conservative' should mean trying to preserve that which is good and trying to stave off whatever is corrosive and destructive of our way of life and our heritage. Civilization depends on continuity; if we are civilized and we have a way of life which has worked well for us, which we have, then passing that civilization on to the coming generations in as intact a form as possible is the essence of maintaining civilization. Once we discard all that was good and all that fostered stability and equilibrium, then 'things fall apart; the center cannot hold.'

Somewhere along the line we were duped out of our birthright, just as Esau was, and for similar reasons; we focus too much on the here and now and on our own gratification without thinking of tomorrow or of the generations to come. And somehow we've been duped into believing that 'conservatism' means a particular political party, or lower taxes and smaller government, when it really has so much more to do with the way we live our daily lives, the rules which govern our interactions among ourselves, and the principle of continuity and respect for the past.

And on those criteria, I encounter precious few conservatives today. We have mostly become petulant children of the counterculture, with all the arrogance and impetuousness inherent in that era.

We have lost the essential part of conservatism, which is the society we are supposedly trying to preserve, and ultimately the people who create that society. Once we've accepted the liberal goals such as egalitarianism and the leveling out of all distinctions, along with the idea that human history is 'progressive' and ever improving, then we have become what we claim to despise.

At this point I am no longer losing sleep over the fortunes of something called 'conservatism'. Conservatism is a diversion and a distraction; what we should be concerned over is our heritage and our way of life and our people. That is what we should be preserving -- or, more accurately, restoring.

We don't need to read any holy canons of Conservatism to find our way back; we have the example of the generations that went before us, and their time-tested ways of living and being and doing. We have the authority we seek, contained in the lives of our forefathers.

We need to shed the liberalism and egalitarian progressivism which has warped every area of our lives. We need to scrape away the accretions of the past few decades from the palimpsest of America and find our true heritage underneath the crude scrawlings of the recent past.

'...an inflammatory bunch'

In this article from the not-too-distant past, a blogger comments on a news story about -- what a coincidence -- blog wars.

...the kind of exchange that regularly lights up the blogosphere in varying degrees of nastiness. Feuds spill into vast corners of typo-ridden cyberspace as bloggers post and repost passages for paint-by-number demolition and incendiary comments fan the flames.

You can't help but think that Thomas Jefferson himself would be pleased to know that out there in the awesome equalizing social force that is the Internet, people armed with the power of free-flowing ideas are busy pummeling the crap out of each other.

More than that, they're doing it in public, with an often participatory audience. Blog fights are verbal steel-cage smackdowns with a revolving door. Says Ariel Meadow Stallings, a Seattle writer who posts her random musings at Electrolicious.com: "Bloggers are an inflammatory bunch."

It seems that even the innocuous topics, like parenting, often lead to ugly exchanges on the Internet. It isn't just politics that sparks this kind of thing. I was once on a message board discussion about a TV show that erupted into an ugly flame war.

So how does a blogger avoid being embroiled in this kind of thing, or defuse it once it's started?

Is it possible to unilaterally opt out of a blog war? Is it ended when one side stops fighting back?

More science in the service of an agenda

Whites Genetically Weaker Than Blacks, Study Finds


Some scientists apparently haven't gotten the memo which decreed that 'race is only a social construct', because they insist on doing studies on the innate, genetic differences among the people of these various 'social constructs.'

I'm no genetics expert, obviously. I've studied only a little about these things in anthropology classes in college, but I think the main purpose for studies like this one is to push a political agenda. The agenda, of course, is the multicultural 'we are all one people, who came out of the African matrix' agenda. However, this study serves to confuse more than it clarifies.

First of all, the conclusion that whites are 'genetically weaker' than blacks is based on what? What in the results of the study backs up that statement?

Analyzing the genetic makeup of 20 Americans of European ancestry and 15 African-Americans, researchers found that the former showed much less variation among 10,000 tested genes than did the latter, which was expected.

They also found that Europeans had many more possibly harmful mutations than did African, which was a surprise.''

Apparently, the 'less variation' genes, and the claim of 'more possibly harmful mutations' are the findings that they relate to 'genetic weakness.'

The fact that they qualify that last statement by saying 'possibly' harmful mutations indicates that they are making a possibly unjustified judgment there.

The fact that black Americans have more genetic variation should not be surprising, considering that their ancestors derived from a number of different tribes, and not from a single group of people.

However, how valid is a study like this, based on only 20 White Americans and 15 black Americans? Did they pick 'average' Americans, or did they pick white Americans from, say New York City or some other large urban area, which tend to be unrepresentative of Americans in general? Or did they pick heartland Americans? There is no indication of who the subjects of the study were.

We often hear the politically correct claims that 'there is no average American; we're all mixed, we're all mutts.' Yet this study seems to show relative homogeneity for Whites. If this is true it should give us further incentive to unite and think and act as a group. But that's not PC.

Another politically correct article of faith is, as I said, that race is a mere social construct, and that skin color is the only thing that distinguishes black from White.

Obviously this study does not substantiate that claim, but not to worry; that won't deter the next simple-minded liberal from saying it again anyway.

Another often-repeated canard is that black Americans have a higher rate of diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other such ailments. If, however, Whites are 'genetically weaker' because of a greater number of possibly harmful mutations, how is it that Whites apparently have a longer life expectancy and better overall health, at least according to the frequent laments about racial disparities in disease and health care?

Probably the stock answer would be that blacks are victims of racism and an inherently unequal health care system, and so that's why Whites live longer and have lower rates of certain diseases. "When in doubt, blame it on racism", seems to be the rule.

The very technical article on this study from Nature is here for those who have the scientific knowledge to be able to follow it.

I think the overall message meant to be conveyed by the mainstream media reporting on this study of a few dozen (possibly unrepresentative) people is that whites are deficient in 'diversity'. Since diversity is so all-important, being our strength and all, for the sake of the improvement of the human race (there's only one race, remember) we had better start doing a better job of blending everybody together in the big blender. The blender is now the symbol, not the melting pot.

I've noticed that a certain argument keeps cropping up when the subject of racial differences is discussed: the idea that whites are an 'inbred' group of people and as such, defective and in need of some diversity to lend some 'hybrid vigor' to the species. Is there any basis to this canard?

How closely related is 'inbred'? I think it's especially odd to consider people of European descent as not diverse enough when we can see for ourselves that European-descended peoples are the only group with any degree of variety in phenotypes: European-descended people have every possible shade of hair color and hair texture, varied eye color, varying complexions from pale, porcelain skin to olive, various body types and head shapes, heights, and sizes. Yet each of the other major races seems to have mostly dark hair and eyes, with almost no exceptions, and similar hair texture and complexions within each major group. Nowadays it is highly un-PC to say, as older generations did of various other races, that 'they all look alike to me'. In a sense, that observation is true, from a White perspective. We are used to seeing much more variety within our own supposedly non-diverse group, while other groups seem much more similar than different within their groups.

Notice the AP photo that accompanies the linked article; not-so-subtle propaganda, and it's typical of what we are being bombarded with in the old media.

We have to be able to look at these kinds of stories from the media and recognize them as what they are: not an attempt to further scientific understanding (although maybe the actual scientists involved may have purer intentions) but as media attempts to shape our thinking on race.

Loyalty and leadership

Too much loyalty, or too little?

It seems that loyalty is at the core of much of what is wrong with America today. In some ways we have far too much of it and in some ways we are lacking in it. Or we have the wrong kind of loyalty, to the wrong people, and are deficient in it where it is most needed.

I have been thinking of this in connection with the current political situation, and the woeful choices being presented to us in this election, but this problem is widespread and has a bearing on many aspects of our lives.

The most pressing misapplication of loyalty is of the 'vertical loyalty' in which people seem to look for some kind of charismatic man on a horse to put the world to rights for them. We need only look at the example of Barack Obama and the bizarre cult surrounding him: women swooning at his public appearances, and people reacting as they would at a fervid prayer-meeting or revival instead of at a political rally.
A disturbing number of Republicans are also showing signs of being drawn into the Obama admiration society. Any perceptive and honest person can guess at the reasons for this.

The more common problem among 'conservatives' at this time is not the unthinking 'vertical loyalty' to a slick leader, but to the Republican Party, coupled with the flip side, a rather exaggerated fear of the opposing party. Is this a 'horizontal loyalty', loyalty to a group of people or is it just a loyalty to the brand name of the GOP and what it purports to stand for? I would say it's more the latter.

Lacking on both sides of the political aisle is sufficient horizontal loyalty towards one's people, and I would say our loyalty to our own stretches not just laterally to our contemporaries but backward and forward in time, encompassing our ancestors and our future progeny. We see far too little concern for this; there is too much orientation to the present with little thought for the future. Since we have become a materialistic people with a dwindling belief in things eternal, in the old verities, we naturally tend to neglect the long-range prospects for our people.

Why have we come to have so little 'horizontal loyalty' to our own? There is no simple one-sentence answer but obviously there has been a long-term effort to undermine this natural feeling of kinship. Divide and rule has been an effective strategy and our country with its tradition of welcoming in people from far-flung countries was susceptible to having its very core identity and essence assailed by means of immigration from incompatible peoples.

I think it's too easy to blame 'the liberals' for much of this; in so doing, many Republicans and conservatives absolve themselves of any complicity in it, when in fact they have acquiesced if not actively participated in the divide-and-rule process.

As it stands, we are now divided many ways, based, most obviously, on race and ancestry, then along religious lines (atheists vs. Christians, other religions vs. Christians, Christians among themselves), as well as sex/gender lines, class lines, regional loyalties, and of course politics. The first and the last categories seem to engender the most bitter and intractable conflicts.

Al Gore appears to have been unwittingly accurate when he mistranslated 'E Pluribus Unum' as 'out of one, many.'

So, lacking the normal and healthy quantum of lateral or horizontal loyalty among ourselves, we substitute vertical loyalty, and tend to submit to the powerful at the top, whether a charismatic individual in whom we invest our allegiance, or whether we make The Party the be-all and the end-all and bow our knee to the party powers-that-be.

Some people, of course, devote most of their loyalty to a religious system or hierarchy, with some systems being more authoritarian than others.

As a Christian I believe that God alone merits that kind of total submission, not any human being or system. Any absolute faith in or devotion to a human being or a man-made philosophy or institution is just misplaced and will lead to grief at some point. Patriotism can become a false religion when it crosses the line to unquestioning, blind faith in one's country.

Patriotism, party loyalty, loyalty to a religious system or ideology, all these have to be taught; they are not natural and innate in us, as is the bond to those close to us, to kin and kind.

It becomes a perplexing question: how is it that so many of us are willing or able to forego their "natural affections" in order to follow a leader or a political party or system which is actually inimical and destructive to their kin and kind? What is short-circuiting our natural affections and loyalties that enables this to happen?

Human beings do possess innate instincts for group loyalty and affinity; I am convinced of that. But human beings, being flawed as we are, can circumvent or bypass the natural inclinations in many ways. Maybe part of our fallen condition, in Christian terminology, is that we are malleable and suggestible. That's the whole story of Genesis 3, isn't it? The persuasive serpent in the garden, leading Eve astray -- aided by her cooperation.

We seem to have lost the discernment and the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, genuine from counterfeit, and when discernment is lacking, people look for a leader they trust and like. This might also be blamed on moral laziness; people seem to find it too demanding these days to discern right and wrong, good and bad, for themselves, so it's tempting to look either for a ready-made guide, some system of thought or ideology, to decide for us what is good or bad, right or wrong. And some declare that there is no wrong or right, merely different 'narratives' and preferences.

But following a charismatic leader is tempting for some people, perhaps the people who are the most emotionally immature, and the people who have nothing else in which they have faith. The leader then becomes their guide and their authority; they need only follow, and follow blindly in too many cases. Then it seems that when a cult develops around an individual, that in-group satisfies their natural need for group identity and belonging, a need which in a normal society would be met by the natural bond of the group one is born into.

In a society which is becoming more fragmented by the day, more lacking in normal attachments, we are on a path to becoming more susceptible to charismatic seducers who then provide the sense of belonging, and the sense of purpose that is lacking.

Thomas Carlyle, who wrote so much about heroes and great men, wrote about the different kinds of heroes or 'great men', including the prophet, the poet, and the 'commander over men.'

Carlyle said of the last type, the King, that

"He is practically the summary for us of all the various figures of heroism: Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here, to command over us, to furnish us with constant practical teaching to tell us for the day and hour what we are to do."

Is it true of all of us that we need this kind of authoritarian figure to 'command over us' and 'tell us for the day and hour what we are to do'? I like to think this tendency to submit blindly to flesh and blood is a weakness and a flaw that is not common to all human beings, but there may be that tendency in all of us. However it seems to me that Americans are more prone to this kind of submissive followership now than in past eras. Our founding ancestors did not approve of this kind of cravenness in human nature. George Washington (whose birthday just passed, without the honor due) refused the offer to make him a king instead of our first President.

In the past I've lamented the lack of leadership in our day; we seem to live in an age of pygmies and eunuchs who nonetheless have courtiers bowing to them. But in the end maybe it's true that each age gets the leaders it deserves.

If we could rediscover our history and our sense of unity we might be better able to raise up leaders, competent and decent men among us, and above all, to have the discernment to recognize those who are truly fit for leadership. As it is, we are at risk to be exploited by the manipulators and demagogues who dominate our age.

'A handful of people...can change a nation'

My faithful readers (you of the superhuman attention spans) know how much I admire Albert Jay Nock. Here is a piece which appears at First Principles
The Durable Mr. Nock

[Warning; it's a lengthy piece,but it is a worthwhile piece for those who can handle it.]
Here is a sample or two:

Albert Jay Nock died too soon, but not before he had nailed to the mast several of the paradoxes which make living in our age so intriguing. He tookgreat delight, for example, in pointing out that American colleges and universities are generally hostile to education and learning. In conversation one day with several college presidents, Nock laid down a number of stringent guidelines for running a college. One of the presidents, somewhat shocked, said, “Why Mr. Nock, if my college were to follow your advice we’d lose most of the faculty and all but about five of the students.” Nock pondered this for a moment, and then replied, “That would be just the right size for a college.”

The life-long concern of this man was with the quality of life lived in our civilization; he found the quality poor. Institutions of higher learning, so called, were by no means his only target. Nock was a staunch defender of capitalism, but he was unsparing in his criticism of capitalists for distrusting the free market: and for trotting down to Washington begging for handouts.
[...]
A small number of men and women whose convictions are so sound and so clearly thought out that they will go through hell and high water for them are more than a match for the multitude whose ideas are too vague to generate convictions. A little leaven raises the entire lump of dough; a tiny flame starts a mighty conflagration; a small rudder turns a huge ship. And a handful of people possessed of ideas and a dream can change a nation—especially when that nation is searching for new answers and a new direction.''

It's OK to stereotype if...

... the target of your stereotype is whitey.

I was going to blog something about the growing Obama cult, but I came across the link at Steve Sailer's blog
to this site.

In a way, the blog is a parody of itself. ''Whitepeople'' according to what I read on the blog are: materialistic, superficial, trendy, shallow, weak, bland, and boring.

I've often said that stereotypes always have a grain of truth, or more than a grain, in them. Is this droll stereotype of whites true? Yes, it's true of a type of white person. I would say it's more true of the younger people, the upper middle class and wealthy, the college educated, urban-dwelling, liberal/libertarian/leftist types. It is not true of older whites in many cases, or lower income whites, or rural people, or many people from the South, or people of a conservative political temperament.

Is it all in good fun, or does it contribute further to the disparaging of white people which is so popular today? And assuredly this kind of self-ridicule (I am going on the assumption that the blogger is in fact white) is hardly fresh or new; I've (unwillingly) watched parts of movies of the last ten years or so in which caricatures of white people were a central basis of the 'humor', movies like 'White Chicks' or 'Undercover Brother'. See the reader reviews of the latter on IMDB

The reviews of Undercover Brother at IMDB apparently included some complaints about white stereotyping but I could not find any such comments although they are referenced by comments like this:

Reading the negative comments on this film I wonder what movie some of the angry folks were watching. Racism is using one's own physical traits to establish social superiority over another person, or group of people, who don't look like themselves. I saw nothing of any of the African/Black/persons-of-color trying to "reverse role play" by holding themselves in a superior light over so-called "white people."

It simply wasn't there.

Myself, I hate "white guilt" messages in media of all forms. I've had enough social agenda thrust in my face. But that's NOT THE MESSAGE of "Undercover Brother."

What a lot of the "angry-white-commentators" are bothered by is the fact that they believe this film makes ALL so-called "white persons" look like evil-clowns, or condescending jerks. IT DOESN'T. If that's what you see in this film, then maybe you shouldn't be watching movies in the first place.

This film, as stated clear as day by both cast and crew, is an attempt to tackle a social problem with good humor. If you're offended by the jokes in this film, then you've completely missed the point, and are, in fact, the racist idiot that you claim this film to be (I believe psychologist call this phenomenon "projection," where someone refuses to acknowledge their own faults, and casts their own negative qualities on people they dislike).''

I would bet that this scolding reviewer would not unleash such a scathing putdown towards blacks who were 'offended' by stereotypes of their race. But whitey gets it with both barrels. It's always that way.

So I guess I too am a "racist idiot", "projecting", if I dislike the portrayal of whites in 'entertainment' like this, and, by extension, if I complain about the rather stale and predictable stereotypes of whites as on the blog.

A lone commenter here says

This site is incredibly racist. If this site was dedicated to pointing out what black people like, it would surely be deemed as racist. Why aren’t people proud to be white? Everyone should be proud of their own respective races and not bring down another’s. Multiculturalism will never work when sites like this one are up and running. This only causes racial tension.''

And is answered by the following post:

That’s why it’s called satire. Lighten up already.''

That response, too, is utterly predictable. Would 'Jerome' tell an offended black or other 'victim group' member to 'lighten up'? My money says he wouldn't.

This poster called justanotherwhiteguy says

As anyone heard of free speech? I think this is hiliarious that alot of people are getting bent out of shape b/c of one site. If you dont like it, dont read it! But for people with any kinda of brain, this site just makes you smile b/c you can relate to so many things on it. ie… The kitchenaid mixer, and the renovation.''

Dittos for this guy; he would not say 'if you don't like it, don't read it' to a minority of any kind.

Granted, the blog is understated 'humor' but when I read it, I begin to dislike the people illustrated by the blog; why would I care if this sorry bunch of self-absorbed, denatured, shallow, colorless (in more ways than one) people fade away into oblivion, or get absorbed into a third-world demographic tidal wave? Good riddance to them; they are ciphers and weak-as-water-and-twice-as-bland nonentities. Who would miss such a people if they became as extinct as the dodo bird?

The whole point of the obsession with ''diversity'' and multiculturalism is that white people are not a people, but a void; they are a non-people of no definite culture, with no qualities to speak of except receptivity and passivity in relation to other, more 'colorful' and 'vibrant' and aggressive peoples. Everybody has a culture except whitey, and everybody's culture is 'vibrant' and 'rich', while whitey has no culture or tradition except buying trendy gadgets and being self-effacing servants of the world's 'disadvantaged' peoples.

Why wouldn't we vote ourselves out of existence if we really are such a sorry excuse for a people?

The answer is: we are not the insipid and awkward and vacuous breed of invertebrates portrayed in the PC stereotypes. Certainly there are some of us who fit the description, but if we look at the larger picture, and the totality of our history, we can see that the flaccid people and their flavorless culture of the stereotype are a fairly recent phenomenon on the world scene. We were not always thus. We've been spoiled and weakened by unprecendented material prosperity, we've been dumbed down by our media and educational system -- and by Hollywood propaganda. We are down but we're not out.

While some prefer to rationalize what is happening to the West as a deserved punishment for our collective sins, and thus are willing to cooperate and collude in their own punishment, some of us would prefer to try to rediscover our traditions and our ways of life which surely merit a rightful pride. In doing so, it may be that we can rally to take a stand.

Maybe I should just laugh it all off, as a lot of people are doing. But why are we the only people who are expected to laugh at ourselves while we are being dispossessed and robbed of our birthright?

Some things, many things maybe, can be approached with humor, and laughed at, but some things are just too important to become joke fodder. And reading the site reinforces my doubts about my fellow Americans. I get the sense that many if not most of the commenters are young, having grown up under Political Correctness and multiculturalism. Their way of expressing themselves gives them away. If they are the standard-bearers for the future, then we are truly lost. And they think it's all wonderful. Which is sad.

Forum comments here.

Another Valentine's Day...

...another Moslem protest.
These headlines come around every year at this time:

By Aroonim Bhuyan, Dubai, Feb 13 : Protests against Valentine's Day celebrations are building up in the Gulf region with the Saudi Arabian moral police banning the sale of red roses and an Islamic group in Kuwait warning the media against "glorifying the pagan celebrations".

Thawabet Al Umma, while condemning the Feb 14 celebration, has warned the media against misguiding Muslims "by glorifying such pagan celebrations", according to a report in the Arab Times website.

"Such traditions are imported from the West, and people blindly follow them without looking into the good and bad aspects. Participating in such celebrations will tarnish the image of Islam," it said in a statement.

So, in light of the fact that the news stories represent déjà vu, I decided to repost my blog entry from last Valentine's Day, which I titled

..and never the twain shall meet

As another Valentine's Day is past, some recent news articles on the subject give us pause to consider the gulf between us in the West and those in the non-Western, non-Christian world.

In a society which insistently tells us that we are really all the same, and that our respective cultures can easily be thrown into the blender and retain their flavors, let's think about the differences in worldview displayed in these stories:

At the Conservative Voice, Grant Swank writes about the Moslem campaign against Valentine's Day.

To extremist Muslims, inter-gender love is anathema to their interpretation of Allah’s ethic as set forth in the Koran. It’s contrary to the extremist Muslim murderers global who see their lot in life to spread hate rather than love.

Therefore, when Valentine’s Day comes around once again this year, extremist Muslim mouthpieces are hailing it as from Satan.

According to Dr. Walid Phares’ report: "Valentine’s Day Enrages Jihadists," a Muslim cleric has let the world know that "love is forbidden, love is infidel," per AP.

A Muslim scholar stated that "basic love is not permissible outside commitment to Jihad." Romantic expressions is "decadent."

And it is not just Moslems who object to our Valentine's Day traditions.
Indian Hindus protest Valentine's Day

In India, hardline Hindu nationalists have been burning Valentine's Day cards in protest against what they consider a corrupt and commercial Western celebration.

As South Asia Correspondent Peter Lloyd reports from New Delhi, every year in the capital and other northern cities the radical fringe of Hindu politics gather for noisy protests against Valentine's Day.

This year was no exception.

They denounced it as a corrupting influence on Indian culture.''

This article from India, while more pro-Western, shows again the gulf that exists between Western ideals and customs, and those of non-Western cultures.

... it is evident that such days, and the general ethos of romance and love conveyed through advertisements, serials and books, is raising aspirations in the young. They dream of a chance to "fall in love" and live "happily ever after". Sadly, that is where the dream ends. For Cupid's arrow, in this country, must land in a preordained space — it must strike a person of the right caste and creed. Otherwise, the love match is rejected. Increasingly, that is the hard reality that thousands of young people, who delude themselves into believing that things are changing and that they will be able to make a choice on the basis of the dictates of their hearts, are being forced to face. They are firmly brought down to earth by families who refuse to accept their right to make a choice. If a couple refuses to fall in line, they must face rejection, ex-communication, and even violence. The happy endings are few and far in-between.''

It's a commonplace among those who are wary of Islam to label it misogynistic, oppressive of women. And so it is. But to a great extent, so have been most non-Western cultures. It's ironic that Western feminists are the loudest complainers about the supposed oppression of women in our countries, seemingly oblivious to the fact that generally speaking, women have enjoyed the highest status in Western countries, in Christendom. than in any other culture. I invite anyone to show me an example of a culture outside the West in which women had higher status and more respect.

And the whole tradition of Valentine's Day, which ostensibly honors a St. Valentine,or one of several Saints named Valentine. And apparently, around the 14th century, the feast day of St. Valentine became associated with romantic love, which in turn, developed as an ideal along with the Code of Chivalry.

I've long been fascinated with the Code of Chivalry; I think it was one of the proudest achievements of our Norman ancestors. Now these days, for some reason, our Norman ancestors are not well spoken of; it's more fashionable for those of British ancestry to claim kinship to Anglo-Saxons and Celts, while the poor Normans are judged harshly. Why? They were too strong, and too capable. In our modern world, the strong are devalued, and the weak, the underdog, and the victim reign supreme. Ironically, that grotesque exalting of the weak is something of a perversion of the chivalric tradition. Under the chivalric code, men were to treat the weak generously and kindly, but they were not to disown their power. Strength was honored, not disparaged as it often is now.



Here is one writer's modern take on the meaning of chivalry

Chivalry spells out certain ethical standards that foster the development of manhood. Men are called to be: truthful, loyal, courteous to others, helpmates to women, supporters of justice, and defenders of the weak. They are also expected to avoid scandal.
Beautiful ideals! They attract us with a sense of nostalgia that is almost religious. That's because they are part of us already. Unfortuantely, they must contend with powerful, often destructive influences, like commercial television, that bombard us with outrageously bullish images of men that are, at best, inappropriate.
The virtues of chivalry offer more than pleasantries and politeness. They give purpose and meaning to male strength, and therefore support the overall workings of society. They remind us that Camelot is an ideal worth striving for, the reflection of who we are when we are at our best. Here is a short summary:

Truth provides the foundation of chivalry. A man who lies cannot be trusted. His strength and ambitions cannot be counted on. Truth should always remain our greatest concern.
Loyalty denotes a relationship that is based on truth and commitment. If we are fortunate, we have companions who are loyal to us—but we must be loyal to others as well. Remember, loyalty is a virtue to cultivate, even when it is not reciprocated.
Courtesy provides the means for cordial and meaningful relationships. A society cannot be healthy without courteous interaction. We sometimes admire people who trample on courtesy to get what they want—but keep in mind, the contentious world they create is very disappointing, and we all have to live in it.
Chivalry calls men to honor women, and to serve as their helpmates. This precept merely states the natural order of things. Men should honor women first as people, and then as the conduits and nurturers of life. That certain men commit violence against women, or treat them with disrespect, is an outrage against nature, and presents a poor image of manhood.
Justice involves little more than treating people fairly. It also calls for mercy. We all make mistakes.
We admire men who are strong, but if their strength is not directed to uphold what is good, what value does it have? We are therefore called to use our strength to defend those who cannot defend themselves, and commit ourselves to just causes. Never oppress other people.
[...]
Chivalry also speaks about romantic love. People today often romantic love disappointing. It promises more than it delivers, especially in regards to permanence. Why? Because we perceive romantic love as something spontaneous, something that does not demand work and a strong moral base. Medieval literature tells us quite the opposite. The very essence of romantic love is commitment. This is where chivalry provides a vital ingredient. Love relationships provide the laboratory where the virtues of chivalry are tested to their fullest, and manliness is finally proved. An added bonus shows that proper love encourages us to do our best in all things.''

And here is an excerpt from a 19th century work on Chivalry.

From G.P.R. James, The History of Chivalry, 1830

The first point required of the aspirants to Chivalry in its earliest state, was certainly a solemn vow, “To speak the truth, to succour the helpless and oppressed, and never to turn back from an enemy.''


[...]the knights for long after the first institution of Chivalry, were “simple in their clothing, austere in their morals, humble after victory, firm under misfortune.”

In France, I believe, the order first took its rise; and, probably, the disgust felt by some pure minds at the gross and barbarous licentiousness of the times, infused that virtuous severity into the institutions of Chivalry which was in itself a glory.
[...] [N]o words will be found sufficient to express our admiration for the men who first undertook to combat, not only the tyranny but the vices of their age; who singly went forth to war against crime, injustice, and cruelty; who defied the whole world in defence of innocence, virtue, and truth; who stemmed the torrent of barbarity and evil, and who, from the wrecks of ages, and the ruins of empires, drew out a thousand 14 jewels to glitter in the star that shone upon the breast of knighthood.''

[...]There cannot be a doubt that Chivalry, more than any other institution (except religion) aided to work out the civilization of Europe. It first taught devotion and reverence to those weak, fair beings, who but in their beauty and their gentleness have no defence. It first railed love above the passions of the brute, and by dignifying woman, made woman worthy of love. It gave purity to enthusiasm, crushed barbarous selfishness, taught the heart to expand like a flower to the sunshine, beautified glory with generosity, and smoothed even the rugged brow of war.


For the mind, as far as knowledge went, Chivalry itself did little; but by its influence it did much. For the heart it did every thing; and there is scarcely a noble feeling or a bright aspiration that we find amongst ourselves, or trace in the history of modern Europe, that is not in some degree referrible to that great and noble principle, which has no name but the Spirit of Chivalry.'' [emphasis mine]

An old friend of mine, years ago, used to say 'Chivalry isn't dead; it's just moribund.' And that is true, I think. Our age has forgotten the roots of our civilization, going back to European Christendom, but some of the remnants of the Code of Chivalry still survive, and those traditions are what divide us from the Moslems and the Hindus and the rest of the non-Western, non-Christian world. And to those agnostics and atheists who are indignant at any mention of Christianity and Christendom, I can only say that history cannot be denied; even if you dislike Christianity, it is part of our European heritage. All of us of European ancestry had Christian ancestors going back many generations, and Christianity largely shaped European culture.

The high ideals of Chivalry are all but forgotten today, and the word is rather an archaic word which refers to now politically incorrect things like opening doors for women. But it encompassed both love and war, and it encompassed faith as well. The knight was strong yet compassionate toward the weaker: children, women, the old. A knight fought fairly, and did not attack the unarmed. Please notice how those basic rules of civilized warfare are not observed by Moslems or most non-Western people. Perhaps the Japanese code of bushido closely approximated the Western chivalric tradition, but in general, chivalry, as known in Christendom, was unique in the world.

Our more humane standards in warfare, as compared to the Moslems, make a striking contrast. Unfortunately, they put us at a disadvantage in our war with Moslems. If we are fighting by the old chivalric traditions, as we have been, trying to avoid harming civilians and noncombatants (and how can we tell, when our opponents are not regular, uniformed soldiers) and they are fighting with no holds barred, we are at a disadvantage. Our chivalric traditions leave us vulnerable, when facing an opponent who is not principled. How can we deal with an enemy who is not above using women, children, and the old, as human shields? An enemy who sends children out in harm's way, purposely? Our chivalric codes took the barbaric edge off warfare, as long as our enemies were others who observed the same rules. Now, this is not the case.

And notice how in every Western country where there are Moslem colonies, there seems to be a pattern of rape against the indigenous Western women, often gang rape.

Our prolonged contact with Moslems can only result in conflict, unless one of us is conquered and submits culturally. To survive among Moslems would require that we become more like them; we can no longer cling to our age-old traditions of measured, civilized rules of warfare. We would have to match them in ruthlessness if we are to continue to try to coexist in the same space with them. And in fighting to survive, we would lose something of ourselves, of who we are and who we have been for thousands of years. This would be as tragic as the mere physical or political conquest by Moslems: the surrender of our standards, ideals, and civilization. This is just one more reason why separation from Islam is necessary if we and our culture are to survive intact.

St. Valentine's Day may be thought of as just a sentimental, but ultimately silly, holiday by many people, but it is symbolic of what makes us in the West what we are, with our idealism and sentimentality. The celebration is emblematic of the stark contrast between us and the non-Western world. To them, our romantic love is corrupt, decadent, and intolerable. I think they see it as weak and feeble. And, isolated from the rest of the chivalric code, maybe it is. Christendom, the West, must rediscover the strength and justice aspect of chivalry, and not only the softer, tenderer side which, alone, makes us vulnerable to the predators abroad in a dangerous world.


Forum comments here.

Movies that change your life

In a receent post, 'Living in the past where the rent is cheaper', I alluded to the power of the arts to change people's thinking.
So over at this liberal gathering-place I came across this thread, which illustrates the power, for good or ill, of popular culture or art to change people's lives, or at least to change their views on certain questions.

Example:

Movies have been just one facet of pervasive worldview-changing factors in my life over the last several years. That said, here are some of the ones that have moved me most:

Crash helped me see the pervasiveness of racism in America, and that with regard to the injustices of the world, we each have qualities of both victims and perpetrators, both innocent and guilty.

Donnie Darko has a certain something that helps me both laugh and rage about the absurdities of life. It reminds me that the Unknown is not something to fear but to embrace, and that those who claim to have certainty are either lying or hiding their existential fear.

Rules of Engagement was one of the first films to make me question the morality of demonizing "the other" (in this case, Muslims).

About a Boy moves me for its honest take on the vapidity of a selfish, consumeristic existence.

Phone Booth has one of the most convincing scenes of repentance I've ever seen.

Rashomon (and its sort-of-remake, Hero) show me that "truth" is in the eye of the beholder.

Lady in the Water and The Science of Sleep remind me of the power and the beauty of imagination, creativity, myth-making, world-creation.

Hotel Rwanda makes me hope that one person can make a difference.

Half Nelson helped me understand (a bit better) how challenging change is, and how the machinery of society can keep people entrenched in old/bad habits.

Punch-Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind show me that love needs no reason.

Legends of the Fall, Into the Wild, and A River Runs Through It remind me of my need to experience a full, deep life; of the raw power and spirituality of nature; and of the ultimate emptiness of living for the American Dream.

Munich and American History X taught me that violence is a downward spiral, that hate begets hate.

It does seem that Hollywood is doing a bang-up job of promoting a worldview, and their targeted demographic is very much influenced by it.
Or would such a person still have the same leftist views, without the above-mentioned movies? Do people really change their political orientation via movies, or do they seek out movies and other art that validates their already-chosen viewpoints?

I can remember when I was younger that certain movies affected me at least for that phase of my life; however I was already inclined in a certain direction and gravitated to movies that emphasized what I already believed. I don't know if there was any movie that truly 'changed my life,' at least not permanently.

Maybe after some thought I can come up with some movies that truly did change my life or at least my way of viewing life.

Any comments, readers? What, if any, movie changed your life? Or do movies change minds, or lives?
I would like to believe that movies, or any art form, can reach people on an emotional or aesthetic level in a way that dry polemics can't.
The challenge is: can we restore sounder values and ideals via the arts in any way?

Collective mediocrity, Part II

''Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect.''

The above words were written by George Bancroft, who was a historian, diplomat, and a New England transcendentalist. He was also called 'the father of American History.'

My previous post had to do with the question of whether the 'average' citizen is capable of the demands of participating in the political process of our republic. It may be that because our population has been so dumbed-down and distracted, 'the people possess no authority', in Bancroft's terminology, although he intended another meaning by his words.

Bancroft, like others in his intellectual and social circles, had what I would consider an inordinately high opinion of human perfectibility. I wonder if he were able to time travel, as we discussed the other day, and visit 21st century America, if he would have such a high opinion?

Over at the Nolan Chart, EJ Moosa notes that debate is a lost art in our society.

What are we afraid of? Why are our debates so short? Why are we afraid to debate others on topics of importance? Why do freedom seekers seem to want to stifle debate at the first chance they get? Our presidential debates are not really debates. They are question and answer sessions. The candidates do not go toe to toe, and debate the underlying principles of their beliefs. Those that watch the debates do not have the patience to listen to such a dialog. Either that or they are not really interested unless what they hear reinforced what they already believe. This does not accomplish much.
[...]
Our forefathers debated for weeks and months on issues. Yet here we are and we must be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. A five minute discussion and we have had enough.

Why are we afraid of debate? Is it because we must know what we believe to defend what we believe? That we must have absolute principles behind our statements?

We are told that we should not discuss religion, sex or politics with friends. Yet, are those three topics not the most significant in our lives?''
[Emphasis mine]

That last paragraph is something I've said many times over the course of my life -- or at least regarding religion and politics, although Moosa and I would probably find little political or philosophical common ground apart from support for Ron Paul. But we can agree that debate is a lost and dying art.

When it comes to our presidential 'debates', I've lamented here on this blog how they are not debates in any sense of the word, being scripted and staged, and containing few exchanges of any substance, much less formal arguments and rebuttals. But to 21st century, short-attention-span Americans, these 'debates' and what passes for discourse seem good enough.

We may think this is a trifling matter, but I don't believe that we can have any kind of real participatory government, or an informed electorate, without real debate. And in order to have that, we would need to undertake the monumental task of educating the public from the ground up. Our public schools are meant for indoctrination and socialization only, and seem to actively discourage critical, independent thought. And they do not teach young people logic and analytical thinking, or rhetoric. They seem to purposely turn out young people with little capacity for deep thought or any kind of disciplined use of the mind.

But there is something other than poor education and attention deficit disorder that plays into this phenomenon. It has to do with personality traits or social habits.

Americans somehow seem to confuse argument with personal quarreling. Some people do not perceive any difference between a spirited debate about ideas or events, and a barroom brawl, finding both equally unseemly. Some people are quite willing to enter into a spirited debate or discussion and yet they cannot keep it on a detached and objective level, but must turn it into a personal attack. We see this last phenomenon a lot on the Internet; I suspect many of the attackers and trolls on the Internet may be polite people in the real world, who feel their inhibitions loosened in the anonymous world of the Internet. So we have two extremes: people who shy away from all debate and disagreement, even when it is of a very civilized kind, and people who are eager to turn a polite debate into a slanging match and a donnybrook.

We need to be re-educated on how to have a civilized but frank discussion of ideas and issues. We seem to have lost the art of it, if we ever possessed it.

Albert Jay Nock quoted Goethe as saying that the test of civilization is conversation. In The Right Thing, Nock said:

American life has long been fair game for the observer.
[...] So much, in fact, has been written about the way we live, how we occupy ourselves, how we fill up our leisure, the things we do and leave undone, the things we are likely to do and likely to leave undone, that I for one would never ask for another word on such matters from anybody. As a good American, I try to keep up with what is written about us, but it has become rather a dull business and I probably miss some of it now and then, so I cannot say that no observer has ever made a serious study of our conversation. In all I have read, however, very little has been made of the significance of the things we choose to talk about and our ways of talking about them. Yet I am sure that Goethe's method would give a better measure of our civilization than any other, and that it would pay any observer to look into it. For my own part, ever since I stumbled on Goethe's observation --- now more than twenty years ago --- I have followed that method in many lands. I have studied conversation more closely than any other social phenomenon, picking up from it all the impressions and inferences I could, and I have always found that I got as good results as did those whose critical apparatus was more elaborate. At least, when I read what these critics say about such people as I know, especially my own, they seem to tell me little with which I was not already acquainted
[...]
[T]he most significant thing that I have noticed about conversation in America is that there is so little of it, and as time goes on there seems less and less of it in my hearing. I miss even so much of the free play of ideas as I used to encounter years ago. It would seem that my countrymen no longer have the ideas and imagination they formerly had, or that they care less for them, or that for some reason they are diffident about them and do not like to bring them out. When I first remarked this phenomenon I thought it might be an illusion of advancing age, since I have come to years when the past takes on an unnaturally attractive colour. But as time went on the fact became unmistakable and I began to take notice accordingly.''

Nock remarks that Americans don't like to explore a subject in depth, or to hear a range of opinions; there is a pressure to agree.

It is a mark of maturity to differentiate easily and naturally between personal or social opposition and intellectual opposition. Everyone has noticed how readily children transfer their dislike of an opinion to the person who holds it, and how quick they are to take umbrage at a person who speaks in an unfamiliar mode or even with an unfamiliar accent.''

Nock notes the pressure to conform to popular opinion. I think this is especially strong in our society.

Surely this tendency has to translate into bad news for the success of our political system. A democratic republic relies on an informed and civic-minded citizenry, and an open and fair and thoughtful discussion of important issues. Do we have either of these on any scale in America, or anywhere in the Western world these days?

Nock wrote that the extension of the franchise has been detrimental to the character of politics and to the type of person who enters public service:

...One must also remark with interest that in a republic every extension of the franchise has been accompanied by a deterioration in the character of politics and in the personnel of the public service; and this, too, is by hypothesis what one would look for. When England extended its franchise in the last century, Mr. Mill asked pathetically how it was possible to produce great men in a country where the test of a great mind was agreement with the opinions of small minds; and one can easily paraphrase this saying to suit the terms of our hypothesis.

Allowing everything in reason for other contributing causes, there is at least a striking coincidence in the fact that the American public service, all over the land, became fully twofold more irresponsible, unscrupulous, and scandalously wasteful almost at the moment when the electorate was practically doubled by the extension of the suffrage to women.

[...] On its political side, the eighteenth-century doctrine of republicanism, on which the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution are based, turns out to be utterly false and mischievous. This doctrine assumes that if the mass-men take control of politics, if sovereignty be lodged in "the people" and exercised directly by them, they will in time work out a true commonwealth, a political order established on principles of justice, as set forth in the Rights of Man. The ground of this assumption, obviously, is that the mass-man is human, and therefore capable of a degree of development competent for this purpose; and indeed, if this be true, the doctrine is probably sound enough, the only postulate being that of practically unlimited time.''

And now we return to the ideas of Alexander Hamilton, who was quoted in the blog excerpt I posted yesterday:

At the time our republic was established, Alexander Hamilton was one of many who were strongly against this doctrine [of republicanism]. He objected to the experiment of putting sovereignty in the hands of the mass-man, and he expressed himself about it in terms that are curiously anticipatory of the idea that we are discussing. "The people," he said, "are a great beast." Now, if the anthropologists should decide that Hamilton was right about this, if the mass-man be literally and actually not human, if he be essentially incapable of any such degree of development as our eighteenth-century political theory presupposes, then surely republicanism is about the worst system that could be devised, even for the mass-man himself; for, in practice, instead of promoting any such limited development as the mass-man, in common with the other more teachable and imitative forms of animal life, is capable of making, it seems bound to reflect the very lowest common denominator of the mass-man's intelligence and character, and its tendency must be continuously to depress that denominator ever farther.

Thus instead of improving and elevating the mass-man by means of political experience, republicanism serves merely to degrade him. This appears to be what we see taking place. The candidate for political favor is sedulously careful to approach the mass-man on a plane of intelligence and character which is never above that of the mass-man's ordinary self. It is a commonplace of republican politics that he not only does so, but must do so.

The issues and policies that he presents must be such only as are adjustable to a potential majority in a mass-electorate endowed with an unlimited franchise. Thus every republican campaign reminds one of nothing so much as the scene described by Plato, where a huge, sluggish, obscene monster is surrounded by people who are assiduously flattering it, pretending to understand its noises, and in every imaginable way courting its good-will. Hence, by a selective process almost automatic, the political organization of a republican society is bound to be in control of the mass-man who is gifted merely with a low type of sagacity somewhat in excess of his fellow-creatures; whereby he is able to exploit their lack of intelligence, their vagrant attention, their superficial spirit, their hot and cold fits, their superstitions, their tendency always to run to the short-time point of view—and worst of all, their occasional good impulses, their occasional good faith, their boundless credulity, their weak hopes and weaker fears.

All this is extremely bad for the mass-man. What it does in the long run is to snarl up his society in a terrific tangle, wherein he is utterly helpless. Not only the financial genius of Hamilton but also the transcendent philosophical genius of Hegel foresaw this consequence. Hegel said, at the outset of republicanism, that it would culminate in an unexampled catastrophe; for, when all comes to all, republicanism puts upon the mass-man a burden of responsibility which he is not only unable to bear, but wholly incapable even of comprehending. This view has been inconclusively debated ever since the end of the seventeenth century, and its satisfactory conclusion on a priori grounds now seems as remote as it was then. In our own history we find John Adams on one side of the question, saying that the political struggles of the mass-man, left to his own devices, could end only in "a change of impostors." On the other side we are confronted by the great name of Mr. Jefferson, who believed that the mass-man was indefinitely improvable, that he was capable of learning by political experience, and of learning fast enough to enable him to hold his society together in some sort of working order while he was learning more.''

Nock calls our attention to the stark contrast in opinion between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in their views on the perfectibility of man. On the one hand, Hamilton's rather cynical (or is it realistic?) view, as opposed to Jefferson's more sanguine one. Also on the sanguine side was the assessment of George Bancroft, the transcendentalist historian I quoted at the beginning of this entry. Which view is the correct one?

In an 1835 speech, The People in Art, Government, and Religion, Bancroft said


.

..the best government rests on the people and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority; because the munificent Author of our being has conferred the gifts of mind upon every member of the human race without distinction of outward circumstances. Whatever of other possessions may be engrossed, the mind asserts its own independence. Lands, estates, the produce of mines, the prolific abundance of the seas, may be usurped by a privileged class. Avarice, assuming the form of ambitious power, may grasp realm after realm, subdue continents, compass the earth in its schemes of aggrandizement, and sigh after worlds, but mind eludes the power of appropriation; it exists only in its own individuality; it is a property which can not be confiscated and can not be torn away. It laughs at chance; it bursts from imprisonment; it defies monopoly. A government of equal rights must, therefore, rest upon mind, not wealth, not brute force; some of the moral intelligence of the community should rule the State. Prescription can no more assume to be a valid plea for political injustice; society studies to eradicate established abuses and to bring social institutions and laws into harmony with moral right; not dismayed by the natural and necessary imperfections of all human effort, and not giving way to despair because every hope does not at once ripen into fruit.
[...]
The world can advance only through the culture of the moral and intellectual powers of the people. To accomplish this end by means of the people themselves is the highest purpose of government. If it be the duty of the individual to strive after a perfection like the perfection of God, how much more ought a nation to be the image of duty. The common mind is the true Parian marble fit to be wrought into the likeness to a God. The duty of America is to secure the culture and the happiness of the masses by their reliance on themselves.

[...]
It is the uniform tendency of the popular element to elevate and bless humanity. The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force: in other words, the measure of the progress of civilization is the progress of the people.
[...]
It is alone by infusing great principles into the common mind that revolutions in human society are brought about. They never have been, they never can be effected by superior individual excellence. The age of the Antonines is the age of the greatest glory of the Roman Empire. Men distinguished by every accomplishment of culture and science for a century in succession possessed undisputed sway over more than one hundred millions of men, until, at last, in the person of Marcus Aurelius, philosophy herself seemed to mount the throne. And did she stay the downward tendencies of the Roman Empire? Did she infuse new elements of life into the decaying constitution? Did she commence one great beneficent reform? Not one permanent amelioration was effected. Philosophy was clothed with absolute power; and yet absolute power accomplished nothing for humanity. It could accomplish nothing. Had it been possible, Aurelius would have wrought a change. Society can be regenerated, the human race can be advanced, only by moral principles diffused through the multitude.
[...]
The irresistible tendency of the human race is therefore to advancement, for absolute power has never succeeded and can never succeed in suppressing a single truth. An idea once revealed may find its admission into every living breast and live there. Like God, it becomes immortal and omnipresent. The movement of the species is upward, irresistibly upward. The individual is often lost; providence never disowns the race. No principle once promulgated has ever been forgotten. No “timely tramp” of a despot’s foot ever trod out one idea. The world can not retrograde; the dark ages can not return. Dynasties perish, seeds are buried, nations have been victims to error, martyrs for right; humanity has always been on the advance, gaining maturity, universality, and power.

No truth can perish, no truth can pass away; the flame is undying, tho generations disappear. Wherever moral truth has struck into being, humanity claims and guards the greatest bequest. Each generation gathers together imperishable children of the past, and increases them by new sons of light alike radiant with immortality.''
[Emphasis mine]

There is a degree of truth, I think, in Bancroft's words, but I think his philosophical beliefs inclined him to think somewhat too highly of the perfectibility of the human being. History does not seem to bear out his belief that 'humanity has always been on the advance.' Too often, for the human race, it's one step forward and several steps back, just as I observed yesterday of certain individuals I've encountered. In a way, they typify the human race. Just as when we congratulate ourselves that humanity 'gets it', and we think we are on the way to solving the riddles of the human condition, we see a retrograde movement of the human race. We seem, as a species, to have to keep reinventing the wheel, where our moral and societal development is concerned.

Nock noted that the efforts of the political and social reformers hinged on the question of whether Man is perfectible, or even substantially improvable. If he is, then the pollyannas and the utopian reformers must keep on trying to perfect humanity. If he is not perfectible or even substantially capable of improving or 'evolving' then we had better scale back our hopes for do-gooding projects and government interventions. So this question is central to our politics.

But such questions are never considered, much less discussed by the reformers; we go blithely on assuming that we can continue our endless efforts to improve human nature, despite the observable lack of progress in that area.

Meanwhile, our public discussion is centered on the trivial and the superficial, our discourse deteriorates, and we are left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. In Nock's words,

The civilization of a country consists in the quality of life that is lived there, and this quality shows plainest in the things that people choose to talk about when they talk together, and in the way they choose to talk about them.

It can be taken for granted, I suppose, that man has certain fundamental instincts which must find some kind of collective expression in the society in which he lives. The first and fundamental one is the instinct of expansion, the instinct for continuous improvement in material well-being and economic security. Then there is the instinct of intellect and knowledge, the instinct of religion and morals, of beauty and poetry, of social life and manners. Man has always been more or less consciously working towards a state of society which should give collective expression to these instincts. If society does not give expression to them, he is dissatisfied and finds life irksome, because every unused or unanswered instinct becomes a source of uneasiness and keeps on nagging and festering within him until he does something about it.

Moreover, human society, to be permanently satisfactory, must not only express them all in due balance, proportion, and harmony. If too much stress be laid on any one, the harmony is interrupted, uneasiness and dissatisfaction arise, and, if the interruption persists. disintegration sets in. The fall of nations, the decay and disappearance of whole civilizations, can be finally interpreted in terms of the satisfaction of these instincts. Looking at the life of existing nations, one can put one's finger on those instincts which are being collectively overdone at the expense of the others. In one nation the instinct of expansion and the instinct of intellect and knowledge are relatively over-developed; in another, the instinct of beauty; in another, the instinct of manners; and so on. The term symphonic, which is so often sentimentally applied to the ideal life of society, is really descriptive; for the tendency of mankind from the beginning has been towards a functional blending and harmony among these instincts, precisely like that among the choirs of an orchestra. It would seem then that the quality of life in any society means the degree of development attained by this tendency. The more of these instincts that are satisfied, and the more delicate the harmony of their interplay, the higher and richer is the quality of life in that society; and it is the lower and poorer according as it satisfies fewer of these instincts and permits disharmony in their interplay.''

It would appear that we in America and probably in the West in general have developed the instinct for expansion almost to the exclusion of the other instincts, such as that for religion and morals, intellect and knowledge, and beauty.

And as ideas and ideals as well as emotions, that make us individuals, Nock observed that we are thus less individuated and more conformist. This, although he did not spell it out, would seem to make us inclined towards a mass society, which does not brook much dissension. There is a pressure toward consensus; peer pressure often shapes ideas and ideals and emotions, thus depleting our individuality in what should be the most individualized areas.

To bring this down to the mundane level of our present political campaign, we see the people stampeding, or being stampeded, towards candidates who seem to be the poorest of fits for the expressed wishes of the people: in an era in which many people mobilized to fight amnesty, we get three pro-amnesty candidates. In an era in which most people seem to be disillusioned with if not staunchly opposed to the Iraq War, we get three candidates who will pursue more war. How is this happening? Are the elections rigged? Or are people just being caught up in the bandwagon effect, and passively acquiescing in what is being presented to them as an inevitability, with which they had better get on board?

I think there is much of the latter, and it is no surprise in a society which thinks debate and argument is rude, a society in which people who differ from majority opinion are ridiculed as 'kooks' (Ron Paul and his supporters), that people are willing to be herded toward a comfortable consensus, in which everybody splits the difference though nobody really gets what they want.

I can't help but think that this is not what our forefathers had in mind when they conceived of our system.

How can we extricate ourselves from this situation? Or can we? Does the fault lie in our stars or in ourselves?

I think the very first thing that must happen, if there is any hope at all, is that we have to reinstate free speech, plain talk, and common sense. We have to re-learn, or learn for the first time in some cases, how to think logically and dispassionately, and we have to be able to debate and discuss and talk among ourselves in a civilized way about the urgent issues of our time. This is the absolute first step.

This would be the first step to 'possessing authority' and thus the first step toward obtaining respect for our rights as the people.

Forum comments here.

Collective mediocrity

I have had a blog entry in mind for some days now, 'inspired' or, more accurately, provoked by what I have been observing with the election returns of the last week. It relates also to a piece I wrote about a month ago called 'Crisis of faith', in which I described my wavering faith in my fellow Americans.

Darrell Dow sums up what I have been thinking recently in this piece called Boobus Americanus

A friend once summed up his view of democracy and the limitations inherent therein with the following formulation: "The masses are asses."

While admittedly crude and by no means a wry, Menckenesque description of the folly of Boobus Americanus, my friend insisted he was merely quoting Alexander Hamilton. And in fact, he had hit upon an important truth. Though elites always and everywhere rule, in a democracy they do so by holding to the faith and aspirations of mass man. As Burton Blumert observed, "if we only unmasked the conspiracy, all our problems would be solved, but if the trouble is in all of us, then we really are in trouble."

Witness the current GOP primary. Sixty-four percent of all Americans oppose the Iraq war and fifty-nine percent think things are going "somewhat badly" or "very badly" in bringing stability to that blood-soaked land. Still willing to flak for the prez, an astounding sixty-four percent of GOP primary voters continue to support the war. Obviously, that means the remainder must be voting for Ron Paul, right? Well, no, they are voting for John McCain.''

Dow describes the irrationality behind most of the choices being made by voters across America; people claim to be concerned about illegal immigration and yet they failed to rally behind the candidate who spoke out most forcefully about it, Tom Tancredo. The same people, having 'moved on', then switch their allegiance to someone like Mike Huckabee, who has been an unashamed apologist for illegals for some years. Of course Huckabee made some kind of profession of being a born-again restrictionist, and his lip service to enforcement was enough to satisfy the undiscriminating voter.

And now we are told that McCain is almost certainly the Republican nominee -- which makes not a whit of sense, given that McCain's name is indelibly associated with the amnesty bill which so many Americans fought to defeat last year. We oppose amnesty and yet we are willing to accept the most pro-amnesty, pro-open borders politician out there? This is insane. The only possible explanations are that many people are irrational, or irremediably stupid, too stupid or lazy to find out what a candidate's record shows on a given issue, or that there is some kind of election-fixing going on. Or perhaps all of the above apply.

Dow lists all the issues like trade, smaller government, and the Iraq war -- on which McCain seems to be the worst possible candidate from the perspective of the majority of Republicans, if not all Americans.

What is going on here? Can we attribute this to voter ignorance or apathy? Short attention span? Or is it evidence that the real votes have not been reported, and that the elections are fixed? It is tempting to prefer to believe the latter, rather than to accept that the average American is so lacking in common sense and civic virtue as to vote for a McCain (or a Huckabee, or any of the others in both parties).

I've noticed, to my considerable frustration, that I can be talking with someone who seems to 'get it', who seems to understand that our country is now at considerable risk for various reasons, reasons which are familiar to all my readers. Just when I think I am talking to an aware and perceptive person, that individual will utter some complete inanity which completely destroys my optimism. Sometimes I despair of my fellow Americans. It seems that I will invest considerable time and effort to try to get people to think and to question, and then they will suddenly revert to the kinds of idiocies purveyed by the mass media. One step forward, ten steps back.

Our 'democratic' system puts excessive faith, I think, in the masses. We have become too enamored of the idea that there is some kind of mystic, magical wisdom inherent in mass man, or in the 'average' man or woman. The saying from Alexander Hamilton 'the masses are asses', which Dow quotes at the beginning of his piece, is in fact an echoing of a longstanding attitude, going back to classical times. Have we in fact made a god of 'democracy' or of the average man? Can it be that at the founding of our country, in a reaction against the idea of an aristocracy of birth, we went too far in the opposite direction, toward exalting the 'little guy' and disparaging the idea that perhaps an aristocracy of character and ability might be preferable?

In an ideal world, the average man and woman would be possessed of sound instincts and common sense as well as basic knowledge about the world around us. It was emphasized by those who founded our country that only a literate, informed, moral, righteous people were capable of sustaining our Republic. We may have strayed too far away from that ideal, and in present-day parlance, dumbed down our Republic by broadening the franchise while we diminish the average intelligence.

There is now no serious and informed political discourse except in various isolated places; what passes for political and philosophical discussion in the mainstream media, in newspapers and especially on cable 'news' channels, is crude and banal propaganda. It is no wonder that we have an electorate which does not make rational and informed decisions.

And maybe it was always thus, really. If we look at the quotes from various classical sources, we see that similar laments were heard thousands of years ago.

"In the common people there is no wisdom, no penetration, no power of judgment." - Cicero

"It is proof of a bad cause when it is applauded by the mob." - Seneca

''Since the masses of the people are inconsistent, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequence, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.'' - Polybius


For a while, perhaps, we had an anomalous age in which there was widespread literacy, and when children were given a sound education and a good grounding in logic and reason.

However as Nock and other observers have noted, the very fact that literacy became nearly universal was the beginning of the dumbing-down process. The advent of the printing press, too, may have made possible the wide dissemination of great literature, but mass literacy and mass production of cheap books spread a great deal of inferior and vulgar material as well. In this context, science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon was supposed to have said that "95 percent of everything is crap", the formulation which is now called Sturgeon's Law.

It seems rather a cynical statement, but looking at the media and the political world these days, it certainly seems true.

Sometimes I've had what seemed to be a fruitful conversation with someone about the urgent issues of our time, and about the election, and then later I talk to the same person and it's as though our earlier discussion never took place, or perhaps went in one ear and out the other. Is this just a sign of short attention spans? Poor memories?

It almost seems as if people are placed in a trance by the 'mainstream media'; what they hear on Fox News or on their favorite talk radio program or on Oprah seems to carry considerable weight with many people, and then there are those who, even worse, seem to change their minds by the hour, depending on which neighbor or co-worker they have spent time with. Many people seem highly impressionable, a fact which seems promising at first, because it is easily mistaken for open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity, at least at first glance. But too often, it's just malleability and fickleness, double-mindedness, lukewarmness. I truly do believe that many people vote based on the toss of a coin, or worse, based on what the consensus at the water cooler is. So many people are swept this way and that, and have no fixed beliefs or principles. Some people are fine on their own, in a one-to-one conversation, but put them in a group and they will passively agree with the group consensus.

This is not the stuff of which good representative government is made; it is fodder for demagogues and exploiters.

John Stuart Mill said

At present individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world. The only power deserving the name is that of the masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses. This is as true in the moral and social relations of private life as in public transactions. Those whose opinions go by the name of public opinion are not always the same sort of public: in America they are the whole white population; in England, chiefly the middle class. But they are always a mass, that is to say, collective mediocrity. And what is a still greater novelty, the mass do not now take their opinions from dignitaries in Church or State, from ostensible leaders, or from books. Their thinking is done for them by men much like themselves, addressing them or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment, through the newspapers."

And given the present calibre of our newspapers, this is not a good omen.

Still, since John Stuart Mill wrote this in the 19th century, it's obvious that things were not much better in his day.
In this essay

Everything you need to know

James Leroy Wilson writes, of Albert Jay Nock:

The more Nock was persuaded that humans can not be perfected, the more he looked upon them with a "Christian spirit." Their drives, tastes, and prejudices didn't bother him any more.

It's good advice to those who believe that if only the masses can "be told the truth," they will see the light, change their ways, and reform the system. The best anyone can hope is to reach those with an open mind, who are open to persuasion. We shouldn't expect either the masses or the system to produce freedom or justice - only individuals can choose to be free, and only individuals can be just.''

Maybe this is the only sensible -- or Christian -- attitude to take toward the average man and his irrationality. It may be that we have unrealistic expectations. I have to return to Nock's beliefs that the masses are not amenable to reason or enlightenment; I am afraid that any other view is based on wishful thinking and not on a reading of history.

However, is this not bad news for 'democracy', if the average man, the mass man, is only prey for demagogues and exploiters? What hope is there for representative government, or specifically for our Republic if this is the case?

I suppose I put my hope in the fact that it does not take 'the majority' to make things happen. In fact, if we look at the world now, it's clear that the majority are mere pawns, while a few very powerful -- and very motivated -- people are manipulating the rest.

Maybe all that is necessary to work good is to awaken an equally determined and motivated few to counter the ascendant few who are working so much harm.

Forum comments here.