Polite Kid

Did you watch the '100 Days' press conference? Neither did I, though I've looked at the transcript just to see what was said. But the following question and the ambiguous answer given has me puzzled. At one point, #44 says that waterboarding was torture, and that it 'violates our ideals and values' but then he says he is convinced it was the right thing to do. However I don't expect logic or consistency from him or his administration; it looks like he is trying to have it both ways, predictably:
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. You've said in the past that waterboarding in your opinion is torture. And torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?
MR. OBAMA: What I've said -- and I will repeat -- is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don't think that's just my opinion; that's the opinion of many who've examined the topic. And that's why I put an end to these practices.
I am absolutely convinced that it was the right thing to do -- not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways -- in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.
I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British, during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, "we don't torture," when the -- the entire British -- all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And -- and -- and the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what's -- what's best in a people.
It corrodes the character of a country.''
I have not blogged about this waterboarding/torture issue, because it is rather a thorny subject with which I haven't concerned myself very much. On the one hand, I find little sympathy for terror suspects but on the other hand, I cannot and could not bring myself to share the Rush Limbaugh attitude that, say, the incidents at Abu Ghraib were 'no worse than a fraternity hazing', just no big deal. I remember when that scandal first broke I was still somewhat of a mainstream conservative in many respects, but broke ranks with the dittoheads on the subject of the War on Terror or the Iraq War specifically.
So is waterboarding 'torture'? I don't know. I don't have a clear-cut answer. I do see a danger of simply reacting, as most Republicans do, in knee-jerk fashion to the rantings of the left. In other words, if the Democrats are agin' something, we have to be for it, and not only for it, but rabidly so. If they think waterboarding is torture, we have to say it's not only not torture, but in fact a good and virtuous thing. I reject knee-jerk politics or partisanship.
Overall, though, this issue is not high up on my list of priorities. But here is an interesting discussion from What's Wrong With the World, where Lydia writes about the changing views among conservatives on the ethics of 'torture' and capital punishment.
The End of a Consensus
This post is going to be full of sociological claims about which I am uncertain. It's okay if you disagree with me about them, so long as you do so nicely.
First claim: Thirty-five years ago, most conservatives were both very strongly in favor of the death penalty and strongly opposed to torture, where "torture" would have included waterboarding, if they had been asked about it.
Second claim: This is no longer true today. Now, conservatives who are strongly in favor of the death penalty tend to be the same ones who support at least some forms of torture, and conservatives who are opposed to those same forms of torture tend to be, at least, uneasy about the death penalty rather than strongly in favor of it.
Suppose these are both true. What caused the change?'
There is a paradox here. I would say she is right that a generation or so ago, most conservatives were pro-capital punishment yet they would not have approved of torture, or of some of the 'interrogation methods' that are apparently being used in recent years. She asks why views have shifted among conservatives. It does appear that more conservatives now have misgivings about the death penalty, but there is also a much more cavalier attitude about 'torture' in interrogation. I found the approval of torture by many conservatives to be surprising when it first became apparent a few years ago. I wondered at the time why this was so; I always, even when I was liberal, had a picture of conservatives as being more gentlemanly and civilized than many liberals. I suppose the generation of 'conservatives' who were dittoheads or listeners to talk radio generally tended to be less genteel than the old-time conservatives.
This isn't your father's conservatism.
But why has there been a change, as Lydia asks?
Further down, she says:
There is something to my mind bracing and healthy about a person who recognizes, sternly, uncompromisingly, and forcefully, the importance of the death penalty, who takes a manly position also on self-defense, who is nowhere close to pacifism, but who views torture with unmitigated disgust and rejection. Can anyone imagine John Wayne torturing anyone? But I can certainly imagine him solemnly sentencing a murderer to death. And what about the Marine hymn? "First to fight for right and freedom, and to keep our honor clean."
Regardless of what John Wayne would have countenanced, or more accurately, what his movie characters would have done, would, say, Robert E. Lee have approved of torturing anyone? Stonewall Jackson? Thomas Jefferson? George Washington?
Yet all of these men would, as Lydia says of Wayne, would have no objection to the death penalty where appropriate.
We live in a strange and inconsistent age; some of the same people on the right who support the death penalty for certain criminals are too squeamish to send illegal invaders home, or to close our borders, because that would be cruel and inhumane.
As far as the death penalty, this subject has come up here before. I notice something strange about the comments on Lydia's post at WWWtW: almost no one references or cites the Bible on the subject of the death penalty. Someone quotes G.K. Chesterton as an authority; I admire Chesterton as much as the next, and a quote of his adorns my sidebar. But he is not my authority on ethics and morals. Another commenter references C.S. Lewis; I would say the same of him that I say about Chesterton. But shouldn't a Christian look to the Bible to know God's will on that subject? Surely the absence of Biblical references is surprising on a site which espouses a Christian worldview -- or perhaps more accurately a Catholic viewpoint.
I think the question of the Church's teachings on capital punishment is an interesting topic which should be explored, although I won't attempt that here, as I am not a Catholic and I don't feel qualified to explore that. It's a subject for those who are Catholic or who are more knowledgeable about Catholic theology or doctrine than I. I do know, simply, that the Catholic Church used to favor capital punishment for certain crimes like murder, though I don't know how or why that position was reversed.
Even less do I know why Protestants, in some cases, are abandoning Biblical teaching on the death penalty. I was talking about capital punishment with a very conservatively-brought-up Christian recently, when we were discussing various crimes. This person told me that she was not sure about capital punishment because the Bible says ''vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.'' I attempted to point out that this is in reference to personal matters, admonishing us not to take revenge on someone who has wronged us, just as with the 'turn the other cheek' admonition. But I fear it fell on deaf ears. She thinks capital punishment is revenge, and that it is a failure to show mercy and forgiveness. Again, I tried to point out that God is not only merciful but just and holy, not tolerating sin. She was unconvinced. And I know there are many more like her, who are now becoming more liberal and vacillating on issues like punishment in general. Many have been persuaded by years of exposure to the Oprah approach, and the emphasis on mental illness as the cause of crime, not human sin or evil. Punishment, according to that worldview, is backward; an enlightened society 'understands' and 'rehabilitates' its 'sick people'; it does not punish criminals. That is so 'medieval.'
Someone on the WWWtW thread opines that the tendency to favor harsh interrogation methods for terror suspects is driven by the tribal defense instinct; we feel under threat so we are willing to justify harsh measures to protect our own in wartime or other such extraordinary situations. I think that makes sense; perhaps it's why I am not inclined to feel sympathy for terror suspects or actual terrorists. I don't believe that the Islamic threat is a bogeyman created by the neocons or the media. On the other hand, neither do I see Islam as the primary threat, so I don't fit in with the mainstream right on this issue.
As for the capital punishment question, I think it will assume more importance as the ascendant far left tries its best to abolish capital punishment. They have been relentlessly working towards that goal for decades and they are sensing victory, so they will ratchet up their efforts to end it. And what with the liberalizing of many formerly conservative churches and denominations, I fear Christians will lose the will to defend the death penalty, and concede the moral battle to the left, probably feeling good about themselves as they do so. It's all part of the same phenomenon which causes the Christian 'conservatives' to reverse themselves on homosexuality, same-sex ''marriage'' or other such social issues. What's next?
Addendum
Here are some good defenses, from a Biblical point of view, of capital punishment. They do a very thorough job of examining many possible objections or questions from skeptics on the issue:
Stand to Reason: The Bible and Capital Punishment
by Gregory Koukl
The Bible and Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment and the Bible

Labels: Capital Punishment, Conservatism, Creeping Liberalism, Crime, Death Penalty, Justice System, Liberal Christianity, Traditional Morality

In a recent blog entry, titled In their words, I simply posted a number of quotes from various individuals, all of which spelled out the rationalizations for internationalism, and for this 'global governance' agenda which is being forced on us. The very last quote in that post was by Samuel Zane Batten, from a work of his called The New World Order.
Batten was rather an interesting character; he was not the originator of the ideas he promoted in the New World Order; he was merely writing on a theme which was being sounded from various quarters, even as early as the latter part of the 19th century when he wrote some of his works.
It is notable that in his work ''If America Fail', he delineates the idea of America as 'proposition nation', which was an idea which was already in play. If the country had deemed it useful to admit millions of people of disparate origins, as was the case since the mid-19th century, then it was necessary to remake the image of America to accommodate and rationalize the presence of so many aliens. So the 'proposition nation' and Israel Zangwill's ''melting pot'' were pressed into service as a justification for altering this country.
Batten, in If America Fail, says
''America is not a country merely, not primarily a form of government. America is a gospel, an ideal, The Mission of America a faith, a spirit, a state of heart, a set of principles, a trinity of ideas, an interpretation of the kingdom of God, the far-off goal of history.''
At this point, Batten addresses the question of why nations decline and fall. His recounting of the cycle of nations recalls the work of Sir John Glubb about which I posted recently.
''There are causes and conditions which make nations great and strong; and there are conditions and causes which weaken and destroy nations. What are the causes which have destroyed nations in the past? This question is not easy to answer for the reason that the records are incomplete. Many nations have perished, leaving only a name and a memory. Of some of these nations and peoples we have no written record; all that remains are a few fragments like the fossils of some long-perished mastodon.''The first cause he cites is prosperity, or luxury.
''There is another aspect of this question which we may notice. The growth of luxury always leads to social vices which rot the moral fiber of a nation and cause national decay. For one thing the blight of luxury is felt earliest and most fatally in the home. In the early history of Rome the family life was held in high honor, the marriage bond was respected, and for five centuries divorce was unknown in the Roman world. But the time came when all this was changed.
Under the Empire marriage came to be regarded with disfavor and disdain. Women, as Seneca says, married in order that they might be divorced; and were divorced in order that they might marry. There were noble Roman matrons, he tells us, who counted the years not by the consuls but by the number of their husbands. As might be expected, to have a family was regarded as a misfortune, and all kinds of methods were used to prevent the birth of children. The rich and aristocratic, intent only on their own pleasure and gratification, chafed under the restraints of marriage and grew reluctant to rear children. The poor and servile classes, imitating their superiors, became unwilling to marry and found a family. This suggests the next cause.
The time was when men divided the race into two great classes, the superior, made up of the cultured and the prosperous, and the inferior, made up of the uncultured and the slow-witted. It has been assumed that these two classes possessed very different powers and capacities, that the so-called superior were made of finer clay than these so-called inferior persons. The anthropologist and sociologist of our time no longer accept any such classification as this. In fact the scientist seriously maintains that there is as much real capacity in one race as in another.''
In this area of his thinking, Batten seems to be a curious ''missing link'' between the old, race-conscious thought and the new, increasingly egalitarian, one-world mindset. He wrote a good deal about the Anglo-Saxon origins of this country in some of his works, praising the accomplishments of the founding stock. He acknowledges differences among nations and races of people, but he then reassures us that the races are equal in capacity.
''It is true that the characteristics of one may differ greatly from another; but this is a question of aptitude and not of capacity. Further than this, the sociologist seriously maintains that capacity is practically the same in all classes of people; that there is as much real capacity in what we call the submerged tenth, as in the emerged tenth. It is not a question of capacity but of opportunity.
We believe in the value of man as man; we believe also in what is called the democracy of birth and the essential equality of all men. But the fact remains that men do not possess the same traits and qualities; and further, some qualities and characteristics make for national progress and strength, while certain other qualities and strains make against national progress and vigor. These qualities are not abstract or impersonal, but are always incarnated in persons.
There are persons possessed of unusual forethought, great vigor of mind and body, with initiative and self-control. We shall not call those who do not possess these qualities inferior classes and lesser breeds; but we do say that these are superior qualities so far as the race is concerned; and we do say that no people can be great, progressive, strong, enduring, unless it develops and contains a large number of persons possessing these qualities.
A people rises or falls, it grows or declines, as the proportion of people possessing these qualities increases or decreases. We may illustrate this principle from the experience of Greece and Rome. In ancient Greece there was a time when the family was honored and men and women considered it an honor to raise children. Then Greece advanced to the front rank and rose to the highest greatness. But with prosperity came luxury, and with luxury came a love of pleasure and a softness of temper. In the patrician families the birth-rate declined, and the race was drained of its finest qualities.''
Here, he touches on the theme of declining birth rates as a sign, if not a cause, of the fall of nations.
''The same process is seen in Rome with hardly a change of terms. The greatness of old Rome was built upon the family; so long as the family remained intact and it was an honor to rear children, Rome ruled the world and was invincible. But as the family declined and patricians no longer were willing to bear the burden of children, the foundations of the Empire were undermined and the beginning of the end had come.
In vain did Greek philosophers construct in imagination ideal states where only the best members should have offspring to be supported and reared by the public wisdom and at the public cost. In vain did Roman emperors bestow special privileges on fathers of three children or more. The duties and responsibilities of family life fell into disfavor among many of the best men and the ablest and most attractive women. The stock deteriorated and the fruits of centuries of magnificent civilization were cast away.
The conclusion is certain; the decline of a nation is due in large part to the fact that the proportion of the people with certain necessary superior qualities decreased, and the proportion of people without these necessary survival qualities increased.
It is not possible here to consider all of the causes that have produced these changes and have brought a decline of the better strains. The time was when men explained it, or thought they had explained it, by saying that the stock ran out and the people died of old age. But these things are themselves results and do not touch the causes; in fact they are the very things to be explained.''
[Emphasis mine.]
It is interesting that he uses terms like ''the better strains'' and ''superior qualities.'' Of course he would be shouted down as a bigot and an elitist and a hater if he used such loaded terms today. Although he carefully avoids calling certain people, or groups of people superior, he does allow that some possess ''superior qualities'', although one might take away the impression that he sees these ''superior qualities'' randomly distributed across human populations, and this is not evident according to our common sense and our powers of observation.
At this point, he uses the familiar argument that any differences in circumstances or ability are due to 'social and economic causes.'
''Today it has become very evident that the causes of these changes are largely economic and social. First, note the economic cause of race decline. In every nation, soon or late, as we have seen, there has arisen the problem of land monopoly. The land fell into the hands of a few; the soil was over-worked; the cost of living rose higher and higher; the people left the farms and crowded into the cities; the social pressure became intense; the more prosperous and luxurious classes were unwilling to bear the trouble of raising children; the social pressure greatly reduced the birth-rate among the middle classes.
As a consequence the less provident, the more shiftless classes, taking no thought for tomorrow, following impulse only, were the only people that produced many children. In this way the vigor and stamina of the nation were reduced, and a steady national decline began. That is to say, the economic pressure meant a proportionate decrease in the more vigorous, thoughtful, successful, and progressive stock, and a proportionate increase in the less provident, less thoughtful, less self-controlled and successful people.''
It sounds very much like he is making eugenic arguments. Nowadays, most 'conservatives' have knee-jerk response to the idea of eugenics, as if it is not simply common sense to choose a mate of sound health and character, and to want our children to do likewise. The ''conservatives'' who jeer at eugenics (because it conjures up associations with Margaret Sanger and Hitler) can't actually believe dysgenics is preferable. But much of the reproduction in our day is in fact dysgenic, in exactly the way that Batten says in the following paragraphs:
''The other cause is more social and personal. The prosperous and successful classes were unwilling to bear the burden and strain of a family, and so they ceased to have their proportion of children. In all times one fact appears with monotonous iteration: In the so-called upper classes, the nobility, the people of culture and ability, there has been a decline in the birth-rate and number of children. In this way there was a decrease in the number of forceful personalities, men of foresight and ability, men of self-control and self-reliance. This then is the result of it all: With the decreasing number of children in the more successful, more restrained classes, and the increasing number of children in less successful and more shiftless classes, there has followed a decline in the national strength and cohesion.
However powerful a society may seem to be, it is doomed if it so organizes itself as to breed the wrong sort of people and to favor the survival of the least desirable at the expense of the more valuable. Any society that does these things is a failure � a failure in the degree in which these results are attained.
No people can prosper and grow and endure where the less vigorous and less successful outpropagate the more vigorous and more successful. Historians and sociologists have named many causes, poHtical and economic, to explain the decadence of nations. Slavery, civil war, foreign conquest, bloated armaments, lust of gold, loss of martial spirit, the decay of religion, the decline of the national strength, these have all been summoned to ac- count for their fall. But beyond all, more insidious than all, more fatal than any, in large part the cause of all other causes, is a wrongly selected birth-rate leading to the proportionate decline of the more thrifty and stronger stock and the proportionate increase of the more thriftless and weaker strains.
We may state the law of national progress or decline in the following terms: If from any cause there be a proportionate decrease in the number of people with marked qualities of thrift, vigor, initiative, and ability, and a proportionate increase of the people with the traits of shiftlessness and weakness, there follows an inevitable decline of the national life. If by economic and social conditions children be made too heavy a burden on the more desirable elements of the population, there is a danger that the thrifty and the far-seeing members of the community will postpone marriage, and when married restrict the number of their offspring. Thus while the weak and careless elements grow at an increasing rate, the good stocks of the people check their rate of growth or even diminish in number, and the selective deterioration of the race is hastened in two ways.''
In our age of massive migrations of peoples from the Third World, we see exactly what he describes in action. It's uncomfortable for many people to acknowledge this because there is just no denying that the 'careless elements' are in many cases immigrants and those of the Groups Who Must Not Be Criticized.
Batten's viewpoints, in many cases, would be condemned today for their political incorrectness, but in the long run, he was very much a part of the move towards the multiracial/multicultural, ecumenical, egalitarian One World system.
In fact he was one of the Founding Members of a group called the Brotherhood of the Kingdom, which more or less developed what Christians now refer to as the Social Gospel movement. That movement was in great part a forerunner of the Civil Rights revolution, which has now brought us to our present situation.
Again, this is another example of how the ideas that shaped our present dystopian world order started long, long before the 1960s. It all came out in the open then, whereas it had bubbled beneath the surface for many decades prior to that fateful era.

Labels: Creeping Liberalism, Egalitarianism, Globalism, Multiculturalism, National Character, One World

I feel compelled to address a few of the canards and talking points that the 'colorblind conservatives' return to time and again. One that is frequently heard is that ''Democrat social programs cause all the black social problems. If it weren't for the Democrats/liberals, there would not be so much black crime or illegitimacy.'' Sometimes people elaborate on this one, and claim that black illegitimacy rates were negligible before the social programs of the 60s and onward were introduced. AFDC supposedly caused the number of unmarried mothers to skyrocket, and of course it's implied that were it not for the welfare checks, blacks would be chaste until marriage and monogamous within marriage.
Is there any evidence of that claim? One of the public figures who is most associated with the problem of social pathologies in the ''African-American community'' is Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Although he was a Democrat, he warned of the dangers of family disintegration among blacks. He said:
"The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States."
He was quoted here on the subject:
Mr. Moynihan speaks with passion about a poverty that is inextricably tied to "a volcanic change in family structure, for which there is no comparable experience in human history."
The 'respectable Republicans' say that the volcanic change, which led to a rise in illegitimacy and other social problems, was directly caused by Democrat/liberal bleeding-heart policies, like AFDC and other social programs. However, that is simplistic. The changes were already under way before the growth of the welfare state in the 60s and later. Much of the change resulted from earlier upheavals, first, emancipation, and then the uprooting of large numbers of rural blacks who went to large cities, many in the North, to find jobs. Disconnected from family and familiar surroundings, it was easy for many blacks (and poor Whites, for that matter) to break free of old social constraints and conventional morality.
It must be remembered, too, that many of these rural blacks did not hew as closely to conventional morality as did Whites. Illegitimacy rates and marital breakup rates were always higher than those of Whites.
Morality in general began to become more lax, especially during the years of World War II; this frequently happens because of the disruption caused by war, and the greater mobility and social disarray that accompanies it. Whites, too, had higher rates of social problems in the post-war years, though black problems were significantly more common.
This AmRen article from 1991 points this out.
''Black illegitimacy rates have always caught the attention of observers, even when they were forbidden to draw conclusions from them. As far back as 1944, when Gunnar Myrdal wrote An American Dilemma, he was worried about a 16 percent illegitimacy rate among southern blacks, which was then eight times the white rate. Today, nearly two thirds of all black children are born to single mothers (the figure for whites has risen to 15 percent), and if there is a single statistic that sums up the plight of American blacks today, this is it.''
But is that directly attributable to liberalism, as the 'respectable Republicans' insist? To claim such a thing is to deny that blacks bear any responsibility for their actions, or that they are free moral agents, not puppets of a political party -- or of White people in general, as many of the shriller PC Republicans imply.
Black people are not an inert mass who can be led this way and that by others. Yes, they vote consistently Democrat, because Democrats and their big-mommy government offer better pickings than the Republicans, and because the Democrats anti-White rhetoric and policies appeal to blacks and other minorities. To say that blacks are 'slaves on the Democrat plantation' is silliness. If they are being exploited, which is possible, given the corrupt political system we have, they are also doing some exploiting of their own. The Democrats deliver privileges to nonwhites -- as do the Republicans, but the Democrats go all out, and top Republican pandering every time.
Common sense would support the idea that subsidizing anything produces more of it, so that the easy social welfare benefits would provide an incentive for more single motherhood. This bears on the situation with illegal (and legal) immigrants, too. Subsidizing their irresponsible or illegal actions encourages such actions.
The rest of the talking points being disseminated by the PC Republicans involves a distorted picture of the War Between the States and the Reconstruction era. Their simple-minded scenario depicts Southron Whites as being cartoon villains out of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and makes slavery the sole cause of the rift between North and South. This is a caricature of history, and I cannot refute it in detail here; it would require a book. Unfortunately most Northerners and sadly, many Southron people too, have been weaned on such a caricatured, distorted view of the North-South conflict, and so the PC ''conservatives'' find a ready and gullible audience willing to accept their childish and oversimplified account.
The gullible Republican audience believes that the Democrats represented ''racism'' while the noble and selfless Republicans of the War era and afterward were the friends of blacks and heroic supporters of ''equality'' and freedom. So, believing this, they believe that the only reason the old ''solid South'' voted Democrat for so many years is that White Southerners were evil ''racists''. They show no sign of ever having heard of how Radical Republicans ran rampant in the South during Reconstruction, and how these extremists stripped White Southerners of their civil rights and liberties. They know nothing about the depredations against the White Southron population that took place during Reconstruction. And how can they know, since most schools and history books present a politically corrected account of what happened then, of the excesses and outrages of Reconstruction, of which Republicans were the architects, turned White Southerners against the Republican Party for a century or so. This is why some of my older relatives to this day will not vote Republican.

Actually, the Republican Party has been making the claim that the Democrats want to 're-enslave black people' ever since emancipation and the Reconstruction era, as the above document put out by the Union Republican Congressional committee shows. (Click to enlarge the document)
So now there are two parties, made up mostly of White people, each claiming that the other group of Whites consists of a lot of vile racists who want to ''keep blacks down.'' According to the Democrats, the Republicans are the racists, and according to the Republicans, who want to live down their reputation as being a White man's party, the Democrats are ''the real racists''. So we've got twice as many White people affirming that other White people are hateful racists trying to keep the black man down.
What message does this put out? How does this help the country? It does not; it further cements the minorities' stereotype of Whites as bigots and hypocrites. It hampers relations between the races.
However, that last sentence does not indicate that I am one of those colorblind conservatives who thinks that the races would all get along famously if only ''those other racist White guys'' stopped stirring up hate and division. For Democrats to believe such utopian foolishness is predictable; they are not known for being honest or realistic. But for ''conservatives'', who used to pride themselves on common sense and groundedness to believe this is unforgivable. The Republicans are again proving to be the Stupid Party.
As I type this, I can just hear those objecting that ''but the Democrats are far worse; the Republicans at least have some good candidates!" Yes, I agree to some extent. I plan to vote next week, though my faith in the system is weakening by the day, but I will not have an easy time choosing between the evils.
If the Republican Party is to be salvaged -- and that is a huge ''if'', there will need to be a resurgence of common sense and a repudiation of the childish game-playing and name-calling, and above all, a jettisoning of political correctness and pandering. I know; that's a forlorn hope. But PC and all its attendant lies will have to go; the issues that are at the heart of it are the very issues that will be the death of us if we do not deal with them head-on, minus all the finger-pointing and blame-shifting and name-calling, minus the intra-racial hate and divisiveness.
A rejection of liberalism in its Republican guise is one of the most urgent needs if things are ever to turn around.

Labels: American History, Creeping Liberalism, Cultural Marxism, Divisiveness, Faux Conservatism, North Vs South, Pandering, Political Correctness, Societal Decay

We hear a great deal about ''hate'' in the news and in our discussions on the Internet. I've blogged a number of times about how ''hate'' is nearly criminalized now, as if our feelings, whether they are bad or good, are subject to censure by law.
The ''hate'' is always assumed to come from our side, from the White majority, and never from the various others who live among us. It is a given, under political correctness, that they are always the targets of the ''hate'' which is peculiar to White people alone, and it is a given that they are never the perpetrators. However anybody who reads the news, or who lives in a ''diversity-enriched'' area, knows that we are more often the targets, not the perpetrators. Although there is a growing amount of resentment and ill-feeling on our side these days, it is in some part simply a reaction, a defensive kind of resentment and dislike, if not ''hatred''. It is hard not to dislike someone who hates you, and who makes no secret of it.
This is true on a personal level as well as on a group level. Some years ago, I had a co-worker who, in a passive-aggressive way, made my life miserable at work. She developed a dislike for me, and although I made attempts to befriend her, or at least to have a civil relationship with her, she remained resentful until she eventually quit her job a few years later.
I have a liberal Christian friend who is also a counselor; her advice to me for dealing with this hateful woman was for me to ''kill her with kindness,'' to disarm her and neutralize her dislike for me by being sweet and solicitous towards her. I thanked my friend for her advice, but told her I am not an actress; it isn't in me to feign friendliness or affection. I would be civil as I try to be to everyone, and I would be courteous and fair in my dealings with her. By this time, I was this woman's superior, so this increased her resentment of me.
I did not succeed in winning this bitter woman over; I lack the ability to act sweet towards an enemy.
Even now, as a Christian, I find it hard. I find the commandment to love my enemy, and bless those that curse me, to be hard. It does not come naturally to me, though I know there are many Christians who seem incapable of even conceiving of anyone as an enemy, and I wonder if my Christian walk is deficient because I find loving my enemies to be difficult.
This does not mean I feel raging, seething resentment or hatred towards anyone, nor does it mean that I wish harm on anyone, or that I would do anything vengeful or malicious. There is a difference, for me, between having a dislike and a healthy suspicion of people who have shown themselves to be hostile to me and mine, and truly hating them. To me, hate implies a kind of festering obsession, an excessive focus on someone. Some say hate is the counterpart of love, with both emotions fixed obsessively on a certain person or persons.
My feeling toward those who are hostile to me and mine is to want to avoid and shun them as much as possible. I generally think that real enemies are not likely to be appeased, or won over by saccharine-sweet overtures to them.
I believe this in the group sense, as well as in individual situations.
Would I do good to those who persecute me? I would do a kindness to a personal enemy if I were in a position to. I would do it because I am commanded to, because it is the right thing, not because I think it will make them love or respect me.
However, personal enemies are different from enemies in a national/tribal sense.
Just recently I had a conversation with a friend, who is somewhat politically incorrect but naive, in which she railed about ''racists'' who harass blacks. Where this came from, I don't know; blacks are rare in our town. I suspect she saw something on the news that provoked her remarks. But I tried to bring her to reality by saying ''most of the hatred is directed our way. We are hated more than we are guilty of hating.''
She seemed to understand, but I am not sure I got through to her.
There are many Whites like this woman, usually people who live in non-diverse places, people who have little to no real-life experience of ''diversity'' in its natural setting. They know only the sugarcoated diversity they see on TV and in movies.
There seem to be many Whites like her who do not really perceive anyone as an enemy, and do not want to see any of the hatred that is being directed towards them. They live in a fairytale world where people are all potential friends and brothers. They generally believe if we treat everyone nicely, they will like us, and will reciprocate our kindness.
Reality is a different matter.
I think many White Americans, even those who are not far-left liberals, delude themselves that racial conflict and other group conflicts can be eliminated by ''understanding'' and ''reaching out'', or to use an older term, appeasement.
At the Throne and Altar blog, Bonald writes a very good piece on ''When People Hate You." (I recommend reading the whole thing, of course.)
''What do you do when some group hates your group?
Traditionally, there have been two responses: defense or appeasement. Sometimes, when the enemies goals are modest, appeasement is actually the logical strategy.''
There are some cases, he notes, where our enemy is implacable, and cannot be won over or appeased. Bonald mentions the third possibility -- which is the one most popular among liberals of various stripes: ''understanding'' the hatred. This is the approach that is the ''official'' one in our society. We, the majority group (Christians, Whites, heterosexuals, etc.) must understand and see things from the other's point of view, even to the extent of delegitimizing our own right to self-defense or survival itself. After all, we deserve the hatred that is directed at us; we brought it on ourselves, or at least our ancestors did.
This is a very demoralizing attitude, needless to say.
Many people are stuck in that mode, unable or unwilling to see their own group's interests or their individual interests. They perversely empathize with those who are trying to do them harm physically, or to subvert and supplant us.
How do we become un-stuck as a people?
I think for some of us, the turning point was some specific event, something that brought home to us the fact that we are hated just for what we are and what we represent. For some of us, the process was gradual, and the things that woke us up were cumulative, over time.
In my own case, I remember one turning-point, after decades of bad experiences, when I read a newspaper article by someone on the right -- it may have been Joe Sobran, I can't recall -- who pointed out that every MLK Day, we hear nothing but ''how far we still have to go''. We never hear an acknowledgement of the decades of concessions and special privileges, or of the billions of dollars spent to make amends. No, it's all about how bad we still are, and about how much more must be done, how much more we must do to show our good faith. That struck a nerve with me.
Most people have to have real-life experiences in order to lose the rosy view of ''diversity'' but even then, some refuse to acknowledge that we have enemies, that we are hated more than we hate. Without that recognition, it is hard to change attitudes.

Labels: Appeasement, Creeping Liberalism, Cultural Marxism, Diversity, Ethnic Division, Political Correctness

From Free Republic:
I love my country.....and I won't give it up!
I'm tired of hearing the refrain...."the GOP is dead"....and "the country is going down the tubes the way of Western European socialist countries".
I'm sorry, I won't accept that.
I'm willing to bet most of the people parrotting these lines are old, grizzled, bitter men who are cynical bastards to begin with.
Here's the deal.....I'm a 20-something conservative who loves his country and the values, traditions, and institutions it was founded on. I refuse to accept that it is all for naught at this point.
He goes on to list the discouraging argument he hears from 'conservatives':
Common refrains I hear are:
1. Demographics are changing this country and eliminating any chance of a conservative renewal.
A: Well, Irish Catholics not too long ago voted straight ticket Democrat 100% of the time. Blacks were solidly Republican until the 1960s. Are you telling me conservatives cannot win arguments with Hispanic voters to bring them to our side??? Only if we write them off!!!! People who take the demographic argument are making a borderline racist argument. Yes, the Dems have made an effort to institutionalize minorities into government programs, but they are doomed to fail. Let's start winning some arguments! It aint' that hard if you really try.
2. Young people are indoctrinated in schools and universities.
A: Hogwash. Another baby-boomer argument. The students at University of Missouri were NOT a bunch of brainwashed lefty ideolgues.
[...]
Final comments:
I believe in the power of goodness. America is a special place. Freedom is a universal value. The GOP and the conservative movement et al needs to start pushing this hardcore.
[...]
All you moronic, cynical old nellies can just bother not responding to this post. This is for optimistic freedom-loving Americans ONLY.
God bless all of you, and God bless America...the country I love.''
Well, I guess I am one of those 'moronic, cynical old nellies' the poster despises.
There is that idea, so often expressed by mainstream Republican types, that to be 'conservative', one must be optimistic all the time. Anything else is labeled a 'liberal' attitude; only liberals find fault with things as they are. I don't know how or when this kind of attitude became mandatory among the mainstream GOP types; I am going to guess it was probably during the Reagan era, when Republican triumphalism and smug optimism seemed to be the thing. The belief was apparently that the country was returning to its 'conservative' roots and the future was rosy -- as long as people voted GOP and stayed optimistic. The optimism seems unwarranted, in retrospect, as things have undoubtedly gotten steadily worse from a conservative standpoint. Of course this young man probably cannot see that, since it appears he was probably born after Reagan's presidency and has little historical perspective.
His contention that colleges do not indoctrinate their students is not supported by any facts; he merely says that his school (apparently the University of Missouri) was not liberal. So it seems, however, that his college education did not teach him anything about argument and debate; providing an anecdote does not prove his assertions.
He also takes a swipe at 'baby-boomers', whom he obviously dislikes; this seems distressingly common these days. I would guess his grandparents could have been boomers, if not his parents. To my mind, respect for elders is a must for real conservatives; how is it possible to be ''conservative'' in any way and loathe the generations before you? Sure, the boomers were in many cases notoriously liberal, but it appears the later generations are even more so, considering the numbers of them who voted for the current regime. Again, exceptions do not disprove the rule.
It appears that, as with far too many Americans, he considers 'conservative' and Republican to be one and the same; surely he should be able to see that this is far from true. All he has to do is to look at the party leadership, or at the pathetic candidate who was just defeated at the polls, to see how very un-conservative his beloved Republican Party is.
The first complaint on his list was about the demographic changes harming the prospects of his beloved GOP. He does not believe that this will be the case. Obviously he's been listening to Karl Rove, George Bush, John McCain, Mike Huckabee and all the others who foolishly believe that the Hispanics who are here in the tens of millions will one day vote Republican:
"Are you telling me conservatives cannot win arguments with Hispanic voters to bring them to our side??? Only if we write them off!!!! People who take the demographic argument are making a borderline racist argument. Yes, the Dems have made an effort to institutionalize minorities into government programs, but they are doomed to fail. Let's start winning some arguments! It aint' that hard if you really try.''Only the most stubborn and blind Republican can continue to wallow in that kind of fantasy about winning over Hispanic voters (who are supposedly really ''conservative'' at heart) and bringing minorities en masse into the Republican fold. This thinking is rooted in the idea that the Democrats are 'holding minorities back' with their socialism, and that if only minorities learned about the wonders of the free market and the Protestant work ethic, they would be staunch Republicans and all-American success stories. He totally discounts any inherent differences among the races. Little does he realize, it seems, how very liberal his own thinking is. And he caps off the bit about demographics with a flourish of the race card, saying that the 'demographic argument' is 'borderline racism'.
Sometimes when I encounter people like this who believe themselves conservative while holding many core liberal ideas, I wonder if it is worth it to try to open their minds a little bit and examine their liberal presuppositions. If I meet someone who is as vehement as this young man seems to be, I tend to write them off; he seems very fixed in his thinking, and he's certain he is 'conservative' and right. Such people are very hard to get through to; if I tried to engage this young man in a discussion he would probably think me to be one of those 'right-wing extremists' or one of those 'cynical old nellies.' I think he is one of those who stubbornly holds to his beliefs despite evidence to the contrary in the real world, and in many instances, this stubbornness is rooted in the determination to be ''optimistic'' as he describes himself.
Is conservatism optimistic as a rule? I think conservatism above all should be realistic. Being aware of the world's essential imperfections and imperfectibility, and above all, being cognizant of the fact that human nature is flawed and limited tends to rein in any tendency to blind faith in a rosy future, or any utopian schemes such as the liberals love to envision.
Being optimistic is good only as long as we temper it with realism and humility and a little skepticism. If I don't see these traits or at least the potential for them in someone, I don't attempt to try to reason and argue with them. I suppose I have come to choose my battles a little more carefully. I only hope that this young man and the others out there who may be like him will come to realistic views on the world, and above all, I hope he will come to realize that patriotism should mean, above all, a commitment to his people, to his kin and home and faith, (if he has one).
Putting all his hope and faith in a political party or in some abstract universal idea like ''freedom'' will lead to eternal disappointment and frustration. I hope that he and others like him will look to the wisdom of earlier times rather than the dubious 'wisdom' of Limbaugh or Hannity or Beck.
I hope he learns that if he truly wants to conserve, then conserving one's people and heritage is at the top of the list.

Labels: Conservatism, Conservative Principles, Creeping Liberalism, Generational Divide, Republicans

Michelle Bachmann, who is heralded as one of the rising stars in the Republican Party, tells us all about our country's history and meaning.
If you don't want to view the whole speech, the pertinent parts come at about 9:15 on the video.
"How unique in all of the world, that one nation that was the resting point from people groups all across the world," she said. "It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status."
"Once you got here, we were all the same. Isn't that remarkable?" she asked.
Speaking at an Iowans For Tax Relief event, Bachmann (R-MN) also noted how slavery was a "scourge" on American history, but added that "we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States."
"And," she continued, "I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers [forebears? VA] who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."
Among the other gems of wisdom she offered: "...we are a self-correcting country" and we are ''still continuing and perfecting" and ''equality is what they [our ancestors] came here to be about.''
It sounds like she studied history under Condoleezza Rice. Ms Rice often alluded to America past as being an imperfect thing which we are now working at fixing or perfecting, thanks to the innovations of liberalism and cultural Marxism, of course. This is in no way a 'conservative' or traditional point of view. It is nothing more nor less than a variation on the usual liberal/leftist theme of how the Founding Fathers just didn't get it like we do; we, fortunately, have 'evolved' way beyond those Neanderthals of the colonial era.
Our colonial ancestors did not come here in search of equality; they wanted mainly freedom to worship or freedom from an overbearing government.
I do resent Michelle Bachmann's implications, too, that 'diversity' was a part of the colonies; it was not. The Jamestown colonists were mostly English, and the New England colonists were all English. The 'diversity' came along later, and it was a fateful decision to introduce 'diversity.'
I can't speak for Ms Bachmann's ancestors, whose provenance I don't know.
And as to limited government and lower taxes, she apparently does not understand the connection between 'social justice' policies and high taxes/big government.
If this is the kind of 'conservatism' that the Republicans have to offer, then we are up the creek without the proverbial paddle.

Labels: Creeping Liberalism, Diversity, Republicans

Here/s a rather interesting post at What's Wrong With the World, having to do with today's 'conservatism' and its relation to the dominant liberalism of our time.
"Conservatism" is in our time not conservatism but right-liberalism: political liberalism with a few 'conservative' unprincipled exceptions. The exceptions are unprincipled in the sense that they are not founded in our liberalism, and we for the most part don't recognize their incompatibility with our own liberalism. For a while that meant that 'conservatism' was classical liberalism; now it means, for the most part, culturally 'big tent' neoconservatism. In general it means 'whatever liberalism was about 30 or 50 years ago'.
So looking beyond the election of this very moment, the way to beat the Left politically, and (among other things) effectively save the children being massacred by the acolytes of Moloch -- the only way to beat the Left politically, as an eminently practical concern -- is to stop becoming the Left, through a quasi-Hegelian process which seems to take about two generations.''
In this post, Zippy Catholic decries the lack of an ''anchor political conservatism" which would be an effective counter to the dominant core worldview of the liberal.
The first commenter on the thread asks for a definition of liberalism, and then asks ''What is the antithesis of liberalism?"
I've read the existing comments, and there are several, but it seems no one has come up with a solid definition as requested.
We've covered similar territory on this blog, as my longtime readers will remember. So I won't attempt to re-plow that same ground, but any of you who can offer a good definition of liberalism are welcome to do so.
The whole discussion also brings into play the idea of liberty vs. equality, which has also been a recurring discussion on this blog, and it is an important idea that is not discussed or considered as it should be today. It is very much at the heart of what distinguishes liberals and 'conservatives', though of course I will reiterate that even 'conservatives' these days are imbued with the core ideas of liberalism. And the idea of liberty and freedom are constant themes on both ends of the political spectrum, though each side has differing ideas on what actually constitutes 'liberty' or freedom. Both sides constantly evoke 'liberty' and 'freedom' and yet they are not saying the same things when they use those words.
Do liberals, for example, support freedom of association? Their support of anti-discrimination laws, which deny freedom of association, show that they ultimately don't believe we have freedom of association.
Do they support our freedom to arm ourselves? .
Or our right to freedom of speech and freedom of thought? Only if we use that 'freedom' to say politically correct things, or to think the correct liberal thoughts.
And on it goes.
But the liberal worldview is terribly flawed in that it believes that 'equality' can coexist with freedom or liberty.
The discussion makes me think of this statement by Alexander Hamilton:
Inequality will exist as long as liberty exists. It unavoidably results from that very liberty itself. ''
Liberals don't see, or refuse to see, that we cannot ever have equality without some kind of strong hand to enforce it, which inevitably restricts freedom and liberty.
'Equal housing opportunity' means that landlords lose their right to rent to people of their choosing. And landlords are allowed to discriminate based on credit ratings, income, employment and various other things, but they are forbidden to discriminate on racial/ethnic/religious grounds, because ''all men are created equal.''
(Jefferson obviously lacked prescience when he insisted on that phrase; he obviously didn't foresee the perverted uses to which that phrase has been put.)
Equal opportunity in employment has come to mean affirmative action requirements, filling slots with people of the requisite color or ethnicity, or gender.
The illusory goal of equal outcomes in education has meant the dumbing-down of the schools nationwide, as well as the denial of the right of the majority students to get a good education. The many are being sacrificed in the name of the self-esteem of the few -- all for the sake of preserving this fallacy that we are all equal, if we only 'level the playing field' and rig the system to help the less able to 'excel'.
The recent sub-prime mortgage debacle (which is still playing out) was in large part likely traceable to the misguided effort to create 'equality' in home ownership and to bring minorities into more 'exclusive' neighborhoods previously dominated by Whites.
The effort to stamp out all vestiges of 'discrimination' has meant the stamping-out of standards in every area of life -- so as to try to establish an unnatural 'equality' which can only be maintained, if it is ever achieved, with more coercive government action and more propaganda to keep people from thinking inappropriate thoughts or holding politically incorrect ideas which question 'equality,'
Lord Acton said, many years ago, ''The deepest cause which made the French Revolution so disastrous to liberty was its theory of equality."
It seems obvious that if the utopian idea of creating absolute equality between peoples is paramount, as it is in liberalism, liberty will suffer, as in fact it is suffering.
And it follows that if Obama is elected, this obsession with enforcing 'equality' will be carried to even greater extremes than it is at present.
The consequences for liberty and for our American freedoms will be considerable, especially when we now live in a society in which ethnic/racial groups contend fiercely to further their own interests only, without regard to the general welfare.
Kinsman John Randolph long ago said:
"The principle of liberty and equality, if coupled only with mere selfishness, will make men only devils, each trying to be independent that he may fight only for his own interest."
And to return to the subject of 'core beliefs' of conservatism, one of the ways in which today's conservatives have been subverted by liberalism is the embrace of a kind of faux-populism or egalitarianism. Just wander over to any of the big Republican forums and notice the great number of comments disparaging any kind of social hierarchy; everybody professes to be a hard-core egalitarian and (small-d) democrat and disparages the idea of social ranks. Because our forefathers rejected British royal rule, we tend to jeer the whole idea of aristocracy or royalty. However, the idea of a monarchy in this country was considered, and we've probably all heard that George Washington was offered the crown, though he declined it.
But it seems that most American conservatives embrace the idea of 'democracy' although our forefathers rightly disdained that idea, and they embrace 'equality' as an abstract idea, often without really considering what that ideal implies if followed to its extreme, as with the liberals and leftists.
As to some kind of conservative credo or set of core principles, it seems that every now and then, even here on this blog, somebody calls for a 'conservative credo' or manifesto, and decries our lack of an ideology. But it seems to me that 'ideology' as such implies a set of abstract principles, which, by their abstract nature, tend to become disembodied and lacking a grounding in real human experience. Liberals are very ideological, which is the reason for their disconnect with human nature, and for their perpetual attempt to re-make human nature after their ideological pipe-dreams.
Russell Kirk was adamant that conservatism and ideology don't go together.
His 'Ten Conservative Principles' can be found at the link.
The cry of the Obamanistas is 'Change' and transformation. This is typically liberal: change for its own sake, seeking change without regard for the consequences to the larger society, the rush to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Kirk says, of 'progress' and permanence:
Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.
Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host. The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. This is the means of the conservation of a nation, quite as it is the means of conservation of a living organism. Just how much change a society requires, and what sort of change, depend upon the circumstances of an age and a nation.''
As to a manifesto or a plan which we need to counter the left, or as to a plan for restoring what has been lost to liberalism's manic quest for utopia, we have an adequate blueprint in the traditional society that existed in America over the last few centuries. Look to the past for the core values and principles on which we sustained this country. Our ancestors were wise people; they weren't perfect, and no perfect society exists. Traditional American ways served us very well, up until the upheavals of the 50s, 60s and thereafter. What has happened since then has been a disaster; first, in rather slow motion, but now accelerating to a dangerous speed.
And there are too few ''standing athwart history, yelling 'stop'!' these days.

Labels: Conservative Principles, Creeping Liberalism, Egalitarianism, Equality, Faux Conservatism, Liberty

This is rather depressing.
For some years now, I've wanted to go to Virginia, visit my cousin there, and particularly to visit Williamsburg. But perhaps unsurprisingly, the Colonial Williamsburg "living history museum" is apparently another venue for promoting the politically corrected rewriting of our history.
Blogger MRB describes his visit to CW, and describes the 'historical' markers along the footpath:
Along the path there are numerous markers that try to get the visitor into the mind set of someone from an earlier period. Walking in one reads the following:
1954 "You tolerate segregated schools"
1920 "You accept that women cannot vote"
1913 "You pay no income tax and receive no Social Security"
1865 "You know people who own other people"
My reaction to these and most of the others (there were probably ten in all), was, "yes, times have changed, and mostly for the worst." Mine was probably not the reaction anticipated by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (CWF).
Far more distasteful than these are the markers that one reads when walking back over the bridge. Below is a list of the "high points" of America history according to the CWF.
1786 Thomas Jefferson: "Made religion a matter of personal choice"
1805 Sacagawea: "Led Lewis and Clark to the American West"
1837 Horace Mann: "Inspired a universal thirst for public education"
1863 Abraham Lincoln: "Proclaimed freedom for 3 million Americans"
1879 Thomas Edison: "Turned night into day"
1908 Henry Ford: "Gave Americans the car keys to everywhere"
1928 Louis Armstrong: "Set America�s free spirit to music"
1955 Rosa Parks: "Moved civil rights to the front of the bus"
1961 John F. Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for you � ask what you can do for your country"
If it isn't immediately evident to you what is wrong with each of these descriptions, read the blog entry linked.
Obviously there are a lot of "high points" in American history that might have been commemorated there; how on earth is Louis Armstrong or Rosa Parks, or Sacajawea for that matter, deserving of mention where so many more important contributions and people were omitted?
Why have we gone so mad as to bow down to a small minority of people while at the same time slighting our own people? Yes, it is mostly a rhetorical question. I know the obvious reasons, but I still cannot get over the irrationality of it, or the self-denigration involved in doing perpetual penance and willingly abasing ourselves.
I had been particularly interested in Williamsburg because quite a few of my ancestors lived there, or were otherwise associated with the landmarks there, for example, the Carys being involved in rebuilding the College of William and Mary. My ancestors including the Carys, the Tabbs, the Langhornes, the Blands, and many others had some ties to that area.
However I only learned through reading the Wikipedia entry linked above that the Rockefellers were involved in the building of the 'living history museum' of Colonial Williamsburg. No wonder there is now a strong globalist/PC slant to everything there. I suspect my Virginia ancestors are turning in their graves at what their homes have now become.
The Wiki describes the usual cultural Marxist influence in the story depicted at CW:
Colonial Williamsburg has been criticized for neglecting the role of free African-Americans in Colonial life, in addition to those who were slaves.
[...]
Despite abolition of slavery in 1865 after the American Civil War, later that century and during the first half of the 20th century, racial segregation persisted in Virginia, with many Jim Crow laws requiring it. When it first opened in the 1930s, Colonial Williamsburg had segregated dormitories for its reenactors. African-Americans filled historical roles as servants, rather than free people as in the present day. Colonial Williamsburg allowed the entry of blacks, but Williamsburg area hotels denied them accommodation, and state law forbade blacks from eating in the restored taverns and from shopping in nearby stores. In the 1950s, African-Americans were only allowed to visit Colonial Williamsburg one day a week until after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 began dismantling segregation laws and practices. Colonial Williamsburg offered some of the earlier public accommodations on an integrated basis.
In the 1970s, in reaction to increasing scorn of its one-sided portrayal of colonial life, Colonial Williamsburg increased its number of African-American slave interpretors. In 1994 it added slave auctions and slave marriages; the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference later protested. In 1999 Colonial Williamsburg added a new program to explain slavery and its role in Colonial America.''
The Wiki also tells us:
''The motto of Colonial Williamsburg is "that the future may learn from the past."
Maybe that should be: "that the future may feel guilty about the past'', and of course be shamed into endless apologies and subservience.
This phenomenon of rehearsing and rehashing our past national or racial 'sins' is uncomfortably like the trend seen in many troubled young people today: the trend towards 'self-harm' or self-injury. I know of some young people who for some bizarre reason inflict cuts or wounds on their own flesh. We are doing this on a national or civilizational scale, inflicting harm and pain on ourselves. What healthy person would do that? What healthy person would endlessly dwell on how bad we are/were as a nation, or how evil our forefathers were? Surely all this recrimination takes its toll on the collective psyche.
I don't know whether I will visit CW; I may go and visit my colonial ancestors' graves, most of whose locations I know. But I really don't care to be subjected to somebody's piously PC revisionism, or to be reminded of what "bigots" my ancestors were. The "bigotry" is simply on the other foot now. But the politically correct are too blind to see this.

Labels: American History, Creeping Liberalism, Cultural Marxism, Historical Revisionism, Political Correctness

I've posed that question in various forms on this blog.
The usual answer is that it all started to go wrong in the 1960s.
Lately there has been a spate of articles about the 1960s rebellion, which culminated in a sense in the year 1968. Christopher Hitchens writes about it here.
Here, however, is a piece from TNC on the subject of that era which deals with the origins of the Sixties -- in the Fifties.
The writer refers to a piece from the New York Times Review of Books called 1958: The War of the Intellectuals, by Rachel Donadio.
Donadio tells us of the intellectual intensity of the 1950s, which is a perspective we don't hear too often. So many who think that the New Age of Enlightenment began in the 60s like to exalt that decade and its pretensions by comparing it favorably to the 50s, which is painted in drab colors as an age of oppressive conformity and repression.
There was a lively cultural scene and considerable intellectual ferment in the 50s. Even the popular culture which is decried by many today was a much more genteel and elevated kind than today's popular culture. The debasement which so characterizes today's pop culture was absent then.
But beneath the 'conformist' and mundane surface, there were signs of the coming social revolution. Donadio does not describe these things in critical terms; she simply notes them. For example, the beginnings of the attack on 'value judgments' which is part of the destruction of all discernment and discrimination.
Donadio quotes essayist and critic Dwight Macdonald's essay from 1960 called 'Masscult and Midcult.'
She says
The leveling process taking place in the culture "destroys all values, since value judgments require discrimination, an ugly word in liberal-democratic America," Macdonald wrote. Masscult, he added, "is very, very democratic; it refuses to discriminate against or between anything or anybody."
Macdonald, whose politics were all over the place during his life, was at various times a leftist/anarchist, a Marxist, and by the 50s, a dedicated anti-Communist who puzzlingly, became enamored of the antiwar movement of the 60s, and the New Left. Still, he was in general a social conservative despite his strange political affinities. This seems odd to us now because there are very few social conservatives among the liberal/leftists. For that matter, there are few social conservatives on the so-called 'right' these days, considering how fiscal conservatism and social libertarianism have come to be the norm on the right.
In a sense, Macdonald represents the rather complicated nature of the intellectual establishment in the 1950s. The New Criterion article describes how the supposedly 'conformist' and conservative 50s contained the seed of the counterculture sixties, in which conformity to tradition and the upholding of standards in all areas of life became anathema.
Macdonald and so many other intellectuals of the 50s era, though at first disparaging and disdaining the 'Beat Movement' slowly capitulated to the sixties counterculture and embraced the idea of 'radical chic', fawning over student agitators and black militants.
I suppose the question that ought to be asked is: why was there so little resistance to these pernicious ideas and movements when they came along? How do people make such sudden shifts? It's easier to explain when young people, seeking identity and individuality, eager for novelty, embrace some radical idea or fad. But what of people past middle age, as Macdonald was in the 60s? I suppose his early leftist ideas reemerged, and of course intellectuals and literary types are not necessarily average, typical people of their age and time.
Starting with the intelligentsia, American society was soon seduced by the counterculture, and the effects are still being felt, with the present-day acceptance of 'gay marriage', feminism, obsessive egalitarianism, hatred of all standards and discrimination, and the whole constellation of counterculture ideas.
The article makes another point about the sixties counterculture: there was practically nothing original in it; it was mostly warmed-over Beat Generation standard-issue Bohemian rebellion.
Most if not all the hallmarks of the counterculture were there in the Beat movement: drugs, sexual anarchy, anti-art (art which violates the old norms and esthetic standards), leftist politics, and even the fascination with exotic and outre religions.
And it was already present in a considerable degree in the staid-and-sober 50s. Careful observers of popular culture from that era can see the incipient rebellion even early in the 50s, for example, in the movie 'The Wild One.' Marlon Brando, as motorcycle gang-member Johnny, when asked what he is rebelling against, answers truculently: ''Whaddya got?''
That line is often quoted, especially by sixties types who have made rebellion their life theme.
I like this summation from the TNC article:
In a word, the establishment of the Beat "church" was significant as a chapter in the moral and cultural degradation of our society. Regarded as a literary phenomenon, however, what the Beats produced exists chiefly as a kind of artistic antimatter. It would not be quite right to say that its value is nil, for that might imply an innocuous neutrality. What the Beats have bequeathed us is actively bad, a corrupting as well as a corrupt phenomenon. To borrow an image from the Australian philosopher David Stove, the Beats created a "disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle."
It's very facile to blame the 60s and the 'hippie' baby-boomers who supposedly invented all these corrupting influences which have come to dominate our society. And as a boomer myself, I don't let my generation off the hook. We have plenty to answer for, and I've tried to make some amends for my youthful errors, while some, unfortunately, are as fanatical as ever in theirs.
The rot started, as I have said before, before the 60s, while my generation was in kindergarten, or perhaps sooner. I've mentioned before that the Civil Rights Revolution was well underway when I was a child; it was a fait accompli by the time I was of voting age or even before I was very politically aware.
And the other, perhaps more important part of the process, the social/cultural revolution, was underway much earlier, as well.
Does it matter so much when it began, or who began it? The thing is to recognize where we took the wrong turnings and to go back and retrace our steps, lest we become even more hopelessly lost.

Labels: Counterculture, Creeping Liberalism, Cultural Marxism, Egalitarianism, History, Social Change, Societal Decay