Polite Kid

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.

Labels: Democracy, Egalitarianism, Elections, Politics

I think we're all rather fed up, and weary of the dismal political prospects in our country, so for once I am going to blog about something rather more trivial -- or is it trivial? The subject is the role of hats in our society.
I tend to agree with that philosopher -- was it Confucius? -- who believed that every little detail of life had some significance, and that the small details and niceties and ceremonies were building blocks of civilization. I am one of those rare people who believes that clothes, in a sense, do make the man or the woman. By that I don't mean that the expensively-dressed people, or the fashion plates, are superior to the rest; far from it. But I think that not only does the way we dress and present ourselves reflect our total worldview and our attitude, but it also helps shape it.
I think most of us would agree that there is a different feeling associated with wearing our best, our Sunday finery, as opposed to wearing our sloppy, lounging-around clothes. But does the phrase 'Sunday finery' even have a meaning nowadays, when most people who attend church wear the same clothes they wear for a casual occasion or recreation? In most churches I've attended in recent years, I've seen more jeans and athletic shoes than dressy clothes, and I've seen a lot of rather revealing clothes on many women, especially the younger ones. When the subject is discussed, I'm always the lone voice speaking for dressing up; most people nowadays are very insistent that God wants them to be comfortable above all else, and that they have a God-given, Constitutional right to wear jeans and sneakers to church. Anything else is decried as being superficial or snobbish.
Again, I appeal to tradition here: generations of our ancestors believed in wearing their best on Sundays, and that did not mean being a fashion plate, nor did it mean competing to be the most stylish or the most expensively dressed. Past generations may not have had expensive clothing, and my Puritan ancestors believed in dressing rather simply and conservatively. Those who had little money and few items of clothing still wore the best they had for worship, and the clothes, no matter that they might be cheaply made or well-worn, were clean and pressed; it was a matter of showing respect.
But now it seems it's all about ourselves and what we want or what we feel most ''comfortable'' in.
People these days seem not to favor dressing up for fancy secular occasions, like going to the ballet or the opera or a concert. I remember when I was a child, we dressed up to go to the movies. My parents both loved movies and we went as a family, and dressing up was de rigueur for evening movies. Similarly for travel; you wore your good clothes to take a plane trip, or even a train trip. Nowadays, wherever you go, the Uniform is everywhere: jeans and athletic shoes. Male or female, the look is much the same. I remember being bemused and somewhat appalled about 15 or so years ago when John Kennedy Jr. was photographed by paparazzi with his then-girlfriend, and both he and the girlfriend were dressed identically, with jeans, sneakers, and identical bomber jackets and baseball caps. Unisex. I thought they both looked very proletarian and sloppy, these 'beautiful people.' What's the use of being rich and beautiful and young if you dress in frumpy, nondescript, shapeless, genderless clothes?
One of the items of clothing that was once standard though now rarely worn is the hat. This is true of men particularly; when I was a child hats were almost universally worn by men. And there was an etiquette involved in hat-wearing; the hat had to be doffed in certain settings (in the presence of ladies, and in church, for example). Men would tip the hat as a greeting. I remember in a building where I worked about 20 years ago, there were still a number of older men who visited there, who still wore their hats, and they unfailingly removed their hats as a chivalrous gesture when I entered the elevator. I found that rather gallant and touching, realizing that these men were a vanishing breed in our society.
Here is a rather fun article about 'Bringing Back the Hat'.
''Up until the 1950�s men were rarely seen out and about without a hat sitting upon their head. Since that time, the wearing of hats has seen a precipitous decline. No one is precisely sure why. Some say the downfall of hats occurred when JFK did not wear a hat to his inauguration, thus forever branding them as uncool. This is an urban myth, however, as Kennedy did indeed don a hat that day. Another theory posits that the shrinking size of cars made wearing a hat while driving prohibitively difficult. Most likely, the demise of hats can simply be traced to changing styles and the ongoing trend towards a more casual look.''
Yes, I think that the changing hairstyles and the overall trend towards a more proletarian, egalitarian, anti-style look explains the disappearance of hats. JFK's hatlessness might also be explained by his own hairstyle; he had a very thick, bushy head of hair that was probably not suited to wearing a hat. Later on in the 60s as young men began to adopt the Beatles hairstyle, and long, unkempt hair became the fashion among younger men, hats just didn't suit the look. Later on when some long-haired young men began to affect hats from earlier eras, for example, young hippie men wearing high silk hats with their ragtag, motley attire, the effect was clownish; similarly with long-haired young men wearing a fedora. It just looked absurd. But hair was all-important in the 60s and onward; long hair was a badge; it showed whether one was one of the 'enemy' or whether one was part of the Movement.
Women, too, abandoned hats around the same time, for similar reasons; the bouffant hairstyle, which was teased and sprayed into shape, was not well-adapted to hats. So the hats had to go; no big-haired woman wanted her hair to be flattened by a hat.
As the years went by, the counterculture look seemed to prevail, and people tended to associate the pre-counterculture fashions as being stodgy and ridiculous. Hats were square and passe.
''Yet hats are due for a full resurgence. Hats are both functional and stylish. They can cover a bad hair day, keep your head warm, and shade your eyes from the sun. They can also be worn to cover a receding hairline, which interestingly enough is why Frank Sinatra, an iconic hat wearer, start wearing one in the first place. They give you touch of class and sophistication, impart personality, and add an interesting and unique accent to your outfits. And hats are a sure-fire way to boost your confidence. A cool hat can quickly become your signature piece and give you extra swagger.
Of course men today still wear hats, but they are most often confined to ratty baseball caps, hippie beanie caps, or the thankfully almost extinct trucker hat.''
Personally I would like to see the last of those ubiquitous baseball caps, except on actual baseball players of course. They are fine in the appropriate context.
The comment thread contains a link to this piece by Theodore Dalrymple, called Use Your Head.
''Theodore Dalrymple believes that wearing proper hats � not hoods or woollen beanies � could encourage self-respect and civility in the young
[...]
Why do men behave so badly nowadays? I know that the question has been asked for more than 2,500 years, but it just so happens that, this time, it is entirely apposite. Any doctor who has worked in the NHS will tell you so.
The explanation came to me a few months ago in a blinding flash of illumination: the hat. To the hat, or rather to the lack of one, is to be traced the source of all our ill-deportment. Bare heads, or heads accoutred in the wrong kind of headgear, cause our want of self-respect, and therefore our want of respect for others. What we need, therefore, is more hats: proper ones, from cloth caps to trilbies, homburgs, bowlers and toppers.
[...]
Reflecting on hats, it suddenly occurred to me how much more difficult it was to behave badly in a proper hat, and how much easier to be polite in one. I recalled the days of my childhood during which most men wore a hat, and I remembered that my father, who was not always the most considerate of men, never failed, in a gesture of genuine politeness, to raise his hat to someone whom he knew. Indeed, the etiquette of hats was drummed into me as a child as being a stage in the taming of the natural savage.''
It's an interesting piece; I recommend reading it. Dalrymple asserts, perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that we might encourage hat-wearing as a means of increasing public civility. But I think he is somewhat serious, too, and I do think that what we wear and how we behave are not unrelated.
I think that dressing appropriately shows a proper respect for convention and tradition; dressing for ''comfort'' or to make some rebellious or defiant statement is appropriate to a more adolescent society, which we have become in recent decades. One of the distinctions between the America of my childhood and today's America is that it seemed in the past that grown-ups were in charge; there were rules, there were standards, there were traditions and conventions on which there was a solid consensus. In today's America, it seems as if we've entered Neverland, as in James Barrie's Peter Pan, where there are no grown-ups, and each child creates his own personal Neverland.
I knew someone who said he liked old movies. When I asked him what kind of old movies he liked, he said, ''anything where they wear hats and drive black cars.'' I don't know the significance of black cars here, but the wearing of hats seems to be an indicator of the days when America was still sane and our society was still civilized and decorous.

Labels: American Culture, American Customs, Civility, Egalitarianism, Societal Decay

Selwyn Duke, always interesting, has a new piece up at American Thinker about 'cultural affirmative action.'
In a way, I prefer the old, overt affirmative action. While it was government-sanctioned discrimination, at least it was, in some measure, more honest than our cultural affirmative action. There is such a thing. It's when people in the market and media privilege others -- sometimes unconsciously -- based upon the latter's identification with a "victim group."
Probably a majority of Americans in some degree or other practice cultural affirmative action. They have the best of intentions, many feeling an obligation to right history's wrongs. And they point to continuing disparities disadvantaging blacks as a group. So they make an extra effort to be sensitive and maybe once in awhile the ones with power even let their thumb rest on the scale when it comes to redressing past grievances.''
Duke quotes a Financial Times piece by Christopher Caldwell about a new book, called Racial Paranoia:
''...In Racial Paranoia (Basic Books, $26/�15.99), the University of Pennsylvania anthropologist John L. Jackson Jr suggests that extravagant theories of white racism - from the widespread Aids rumour to Louis Farrakhan's allegation that the US actually blew up the levees to cause the deadly New Orleans floods during Hurricane Katrina - have their roots in the decorous language that mostly white leaders have invented for talking about race.
The US has not managed to eliminate racism, Mr Jackson thinks, but it has succeeded in eliminating racist talk. Remarks the slightest bit "insensitive" draw draconian punishment. White people, because they feel thoroughly oppressed by this regime, assume that it must be some kind of "gift" to minorities, especially blacks.
It is not. It is more like a torment. It renders the power structure more opaque to blacks than it has ever been, leaving what Mr Jackson calls a "scary disconnect between the specifics of what gets said and the hazy possibilities of what kinds of things are truly meant". If the historic enemies of your people suddenly began talking about you in what can fairly be called a secret code, how inclined would you be to trust in their protestations of generosity?''
Duke talks about how most politically correct people choose to lie to themselves rather than be faced with the uncomfortable choice of telling dangerous and unpopular truths, or feigning belief in them (and thus being hypocritical). It makes more sense to talk oneself into believing the platitudes on race, thus avoiding a real and painful examination of the issue.
Duke makes a lot of sense here, although I am not certain that I quite understand the point Christopher Caldwell is making in the quote above.
But if I understand Duke's idea of ''cultural affirmative action", I take it to mean the kind of extra consideration and leeway most well-intentioned people give to minorities. I've done it, and many if not most of you probably have, too.
Ever since the 60s and the Civil Rights revolution, and even before then, there was a perception that black people and other minorities, to a lesser extent, had it hard, and that they needed to be treated rather more charitably than fellow whites. These days, it's almost never condescension which motivates this kind of exaggerated politeness and saccharine niceness, but it's a genuine admiration on the part of many people who really do see minorities, particularly blacks, as being better than the rest of us in some ways, according to the trendy popular 'wisdom' of our day. Blacks, supposedly, have more style; they can dance. They are funnier. They are more expressive, whereas we are inhibited, stiff, and uptight. They have more verve and more hipness. And then there's the victimhood thing, which in our strange age is seen as an attractive quality; victimhood confers a kind of aura of nobility and worth to the victim. They are by definition good and innocent, and put-upon by evil people -- which in this context is us, or at least our racial brethren. Some people assuage their own sense of guilt by scolding and condemning their fellow whites so as to distance themselves and establish their own moral superiority. So pride and vanity play a part in this; it isn't all altruism or conspicuous generosity towards ones' lessers.
I think this exaggerated solicitude for minorities has roots in the idea that they really are in fact not our equals, but yet it's reassuring somehow to think that if only WE did more to 'help' them, their lives would be improved. The fact that they are not in every way our equals, economically or socially, is seen as our fault. So this in effect makes us feel that we have power over their circumstances; if we caused their ''plight'' then we can correct it also. We are again in a superior position. I wonder if liberals ever stop and think about it from that angle? I doubt it.
I can think of a number of cases when, as a liberal, I practiced this kind of 'affirmative action' towards blacks. When I had black employees under my supervision and authority, I tended to cut them more slack, and to be less likely to reprimand or 'crack down' on them. I wanted to be seen as a decent person and of course that meant leaning over backward to establish that I was not racist, but in fact their 'friend.' Was my leniency and preferential treatment appreciated? No; I was in fact taken advantage of because of it. I was viewed as something of a target, someone whose foolish good nature was to be exploited. I knew it and allowed it to happen because I was so indoctrinated.
Yet it took me years to acknowledge it.
Earlier, in the late 60s when I was a student, there were suddenly many black students in college because of outreach efforts, and many of them were not college material -- just as many of all races these days are not.
I had a black female classmate with a pronounced 'attitude' who constantly complained, loudly, that whites had everything easy, had everything handed to them, while Negroes (that was the accepted word then) had to struggle for everything. Whenever I got an A on a test, she would say it was because of my color, whereas her D's were because of her color. She asked, eventually, to cheat off my exam papers -- and, more fool me, I allowed her to. Why? Was it guilt? I really and truly did not feel guilty, and even less did I believe that anybody 'handed' everything to me; I knew I worked and studied for my A's, and I could see that she was not an A student; it wasn't ''prejudice'' that caused her low grades. But I suppose I felt sorry for her, because I knew she would have a tough time finishing college -- and maybe that is ''racism'' -- or is it realism?
But I was exhibiting racial bias when I let her cheat off my exam paper; I would never have let a white student do that. I was showing pro-black bias. And I'm not the only one to have done so. It's even more rife, this pro-minority bias, today than it was then.
When I hear the constant cries of racism, I find it ironic, because the most common form of racism exhibited by white people is the racial favoritism and altruism they show toward blacks. I have seen far more fawning over blacks than I have ever seen gratuitous unkindness toward blacks. I've witnessed far more white people, say, in retail settings, being excessively, fulsomely friendly towards blacks, while being indifferent or even rude toward their fellow whites. I've seen plenty of whites engaging in arguments with fellow whites over racial matters, and siding with minorities against their own fellow whites. This is the most common form of racial bias I see: anti-white, pro-minority racial bias. I see many whites who can scarcely say a good word about their fellow whites but who can only fawn over blacks and other minorities. It carries no social stigma to discriminate against fellow whites in favor of minorities, whereas any careless word to or about minorities risks considerable consequences. And the more 'multicultural' and open we are, the more social prestige accrues to us.
Why, then, do blacks and other minorities perceive so much rudeness and discrimination in their interactions with whites? How can it be that I see whites being ingratiating and smarmy towards minorities, while minorities claim that whitey is usually rude and insulting to them?
In my own personal experience, I've seen instances where the casual rudeness of a retail clerk, for example, is perceived subjectively as being racially motivated, even when it is utterly impersonal. I knew a woman who was convinced that a snooty clerk was condescending to her specifically because of her race, although there was no indication that race was a factor at all. As I tried to tell her: the offending woman was simply ill-mannered. We all encounter such people. But when you see the world completely through a racial prism, and imagine that every unpleasant thing that happens in life is due to ''racism'' then you will see racism everywhere. I think much, if not most, of the complaints of 'bias' and 'racism' are rooted in nothing more than the random rudeness we all have to deal with in our increasingly uncivil society. I wonder if blacks really believe that they and only they have to deal with incivility or casual rudeness? I think in their fantasies about ''white privilege'' they believe that whites truly have a red carpet laid out for them wherever they go, and that life is all smooth sailing for whites.
I think whites, too, have come to believe in the idea of 'white privilege' and they are forever overcompensating for this imagined privilege. Maybe when we are fully second- or third-class citizens (after blacks and Hispanics) in our own country will people feel that the 'playing field has been leveled.'
And those whites who are motivated by a feeling of pity because of the disparities between the races, as I was in my misguided youth, have to come to a realization as I did that life is inherently unfair, and that above all, we are not responsible for everybody. It is not in our power to be godlike and make everybody equal to everybody else. We can't remove all the obstacles that life puts in the paths of minorities; it is not possible for us to make things easy and comfortable for the entire world. The best we can do is to take care of ourselves and those nearest to us should they need help. We are not superhuman. People who truly believe in 'equality' as an ideal should recognize that we are at least equal in our lack of omnipotence. None of us can eliminate life's travails, and to acknowledge our common human limitations would be a first step towards getting over our liberal god complex.

Labels: Affirmative Action, Cultural Marxism, Egalitarianism, Political Correctness

Every Christmas and Easter, the liberal media run numerous stories attempting to cast doubt on the Bible or the existence of Jesus Christ; in other words, to attack Christianity.
Now it looks like Independence Day is to be an official occasion to disparage the Founding Fathers. I blogged about such attacks the other day, and it looks like the barrage continues with the ABC commentators saying that the Founding Fathers weren't gods, just 'guys who didn't let women vote' and didn't free the slaves.
Just for the record, I don't believe the Founding Fathers were gods either, nor am I likening them to Jesus Christ by my mention in the first paragraph of this post. The Founders were flawed human beings as all of us are. However, I won't fall into the trap of having to make disparaging comments about them because I want to display 'fairness' by conceding anything to the carping leftists. Why concede anything to them?
The Founding Fathers, flaws notwithstanding, were intelligent men, much more so than the great majority of 'Americans' today. They were head and shoulders above today's devious and ignorant 'leaders' and politicians. And this is true of the least of the Founding generation.
The Founding Fathers did not give the franchise to women. And so what? Why do people today, even on the ''right'', insist on judging the past by today's false standards? Why is feminism so honored by 'conservatives' today, and its claims treated as a given?
The Founding Fathers, some of them, thought slavery ought to be abolished, but they were, for the most part, practical men who knew that they could not suddenly emancipate great numbers of people who were not prepared for independent life, or full citizenship. Our Founders did believe that we needed a literate and informed populace in order for our system of government to work as it should, and for our society to function. Do these dreamers on the left (and the 'colorblind' right) not see how radical a move it would be to suddenly free a large number of people who had known only slavery? Even the 'forty acres and a mule' idea would not have done much to make the transition practical or wise.
Read the FReepers comments on the news story, and see them climb over each other to protest how most of our Founders really wanted to free the slaves. If they were informed they would know that even their idol, Honest Abe, did not believe such would be a wise move.
"I will say, then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races - that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race" - Abraham Lincoln, Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, September 18, 1858
Thomas Jefferson wrote:
It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.''
Jefferson thought that emancipation was inevitable but he saw the difficulty that would accompany the freeing of slaves. He likened the situation to 'having a wolf by the ears', wherein letting go would be a great danger, but holding on would prove impossible.
Most Republicans, like those self-styled conservatives at FR, would probably denounce Jefferson's analogy quoted above as ''racist.'' I would bet money that most FReepers would not be familiar with the Jefferson quotes above, nor even with Lincoln's statement. They have become persuaded, or persuaded themselves that liberal egalitarian principles are the standard by which everything must be judged. They have become defenders of feminism and racial Marxism. Next (and this is already beginning) they will claim that homosexual 'marriage' is actually a conservative principle, and that everyone should have a 'right' to marry a person, or persons, of their choosing, regardless.
The Marxists/liberals/progressives have tricked the so-called right in this country into defending the values that the left has given birth to, much like cowbirds leave their eggs in other species' nests to be nurtured by them.
The 'right' is under the spell of the left today, and is really nothing more than a pale shadow of the left, in most cases.
While the conventional right imagine themselves to be guardians of the Founding Fathers' principles, they really do not know the Founders, nor do they stand for what the Founding Fathers stood for.
One of the comments on the FReeper thread has Jefferson saying that 'homosexuality is a mental illness.' I had to laugh out loud at that. First off, the word 'homosexuality' was, I think, not even used in the 18th century. In the law, it was called 'buggery' which is the word they tended to use then. And as for 'mental illness', the 18th century knew no such concept, much less terminology; 'mental illness' wasn't invented until the 19th or 20th century, and we are the worse for it.
The Founders, to be sure, were no gods; nobody claims they were. But whatever you might label them -- and today's political labels belong to our time, not 1776 -- they were not egalitarians or cultural Marxists.

Labels: American History, Colorblind Conservatives, Egalitarianism, Founding Fathers

There is an interesting post and discussion thread at Chronicles, in which Thomas Fleming discusses how feminism has undermined, to the point of destruction, our most basic social institution, marriage and family.
He notes how there are now few defenders, even among ''conservatives'', of the ''patriarchy'', as feminists have labeled our former traditions.
''The recent decision to deploy women on submarines has been hailed as a victory in the continuing struggle to liberate women from the oppression of the domineering male sex. Conservatives have generally deplored the move, citing the inevitable sexual tensions and lowering of morale that will result from putting young males and females in such close quarters for long periods of time. (And, think of all those poor male homosexuals who find the submarine service so attractive because of the lack of female competition!). Some conservatives even go so far as to declare their opposition to women serving in any military capacity, but they are a species on the endangered list: Even the great nemesis of women in uniform, James Webb, has backed off, proving once again, that no honest man can be a US senator.''
It is a worthwhile piece, and the discussion following is also good. I recommend reading it.
This piece particularly caught my interest, especially the first paragraph, which I have quoted above. In a recent post titled 'A little leaven', I mentioned the degree to which feminism (as well as leftism in all its manifestations) has captured 'conservatives', especially Republicans. Women in the military seems to be one idea which conservatives, despite strong opposition in the early days of feminism's propaganda onslaught, have now embraced.
As I mentioned in that earlier blog entry, those ''conservatives'' who argue for a co-ed military and women in combat, often do so on the basis that there are patriotic women who want to fight for our country, and they should not only be permitted to do so, but applauded and praised for it.
If one counters that women are simply not the equals of men in the realm of physical size, strength, and aggressiveness, the feminist 'conservatives' fall back on the old familiar liberal response: they will cite some exception which supposedly disproves the rule. Example: "I know a young woman who is as fit and strong as most young men, and she can fight alongside any man. Would you forbid her from doing her part to defend her country?"
The fact that women like the one described above are pretty rare does not deter these people from making a broad generalization that women can be the equals of men in battle, just because there are a few isolated examples of strong, brave, tough women.
Never mind, also, the fact that there is more than one way to ''serve one's country'', as in previous World Wars when women had auxiliary groups and occupied support roles, rather than going into combat in co-ed units with the men.
The other large faction of 'conservatives' who argue for women in combat and for a co-ed military is a group that seems to be mostly men, who argue from an egalitarian perspective: ''If women want to be equal, let 'em be 100 percent equal, and pull their own weight. Draft 'em. Make 'em serve. Make 'em fight and die just like the men. It's unfair to send only males out to fight and die for their country.''
I've heard that one more than a few times, and true to form, someone on the Chronicles thread says something similar.
Let's look at that argument. In a way, it's a concession to feminism. It posits that men and women are, or should be, for fairness' sake, equals in all things, and that women can just toughen up and take it like men, never mind that most women would be not fit nor willing to go into combat.
Now, is that the case because women are too cowardly or too lazy or too privileged to want to go to war, or because women are not fitted for such roles?
Should 'conservatives' be arguing from egalitarian principles like 'equality' and 'fairness'? Do those arguing these things actually believe the sexes are equal in ability to fight and in the aggressive traits needed to be an effective warrior? Do they believe that women and men can actually share living quarters, with little privacy or room for modesty, without problematic situations arising?
Do these egalitarians really believe that, or is their profession of belief in equality disingenuous? I think, obviously, that they believe no such thing; their arguments exhibit a desire to punish women, or feminists at least, by forcing them to endure the hardships of combat.
I can concede that the anger towards women is legitimate and justified. Feminism is and has always been a hostile, misandrist movement, which on its part has had punitive instincts toward males. So it is understandable that many men respond in kind.
But to go as far as to argue for women in the military and in combat just out of spite is going a little far. Firstly, does the conservative who makes these arguments believe that the presence of women in military roles in co-ed situations does not have a deleterious effect on male bonding and camaraderie, which is a big part of the effectiveness of the soldier and the military generally?
The presence of women in these situations generates sexual tension, sometimes jealousy and squabbling amongst the men. Men also feel the need to tone down their normal male group behavior because of the presence of females. Women, too, probably develop rivalries and squabbles with other women in the group, who may be romantic/sexual competition for them.
It's an established fact that pregnancies in the co-ed military are a problem, which anybody with common sense could have foreseen.
There is also the possibility during warfare for captured female soldiers to be raped, which possibility most of us who have daughters would take very seriously. But the hard-nosed egalitarian 'conservative' says ''so what? Men get raped too, why are women considered too delicate to risk that? Don't we value our sons just as much as our daughters?"
I tend to doubt that male prisoners are as likely to be raped by captors, although I could be wrong about that.
To return to the question of differences in muscular strength, stamina, and plain old grit, can the average female offer fellow male soldiers the same kind of physical back-up in a combat situation as another male would? To say 'yes' is being unrealistic, I think.
A while back, I mentioned a fire we had here at home, and the fact that one of the firefighters was a young woman who looked to be all of 5'3'' and rather small-framed. There is no way she could perform on the same level as her fellow firefighters who were all young men in their prime, most of them well over 6 feet tall, and solidly built. Sorry, but I want the strong young men here in the case of emergency, and if that hurts the girls' feelings, so be it.
I have heard that the physical requisites for these jobs have been lowered so as to give women a 'fairer' chance to qualify, and that in itself is wrong. It's the same with our military.
Women and men are not equals in all respects, certainly not in strength and size. To even have to say that is ridiculous; it used to be a given, something that even young children could see.
While acknowledging that there are no doubt some women who acquit themselves pretty well in the military, I still believe that these rare exceptions do not disprove the rule.
It does seem as though there is a fairly large group of people on the right who seem to think the idea of female soldiers is perfectly acceptable, whether through cynicism or because they have simply bought the egalitarian, leftist thinking that argues for overturning traditional male-female roles. It's ''progress'', or ''things are just different now; nothing stays the same forever''.
The larger question here, though, is why have so many conservatives bought into the egalitarianism of the left? Just as in the earlier blog entry I wrote, I will say that even some of us stubborn right-wingers have succumbed to the propaganda and to that old devil, peer pressure. These ideas are popular, and nobody wants to be an old fogey or a 'reactionary' or the dread 'sexist.'
That's the real issue that must be dealt with: how do we discourage or avert this insidious leftism, and once having found it, how do we excise it from our midst?

Labels: Conservative Principles, Egalitarianism, Feminism, Misandry, Political Correctness

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

It's interesting that this story has emerged now; it's been known for a while that these things happen.
I posted about such incidents a couple of years ago, but I think the fact that the issue is getting coverage in the mainstream media is something new.
No, not in war, but in the Peace Corps. An investigation by ABC's 20/20 claims that "More than 1,000 young American women have been raped or sexually assaulted in the last decade while serving as Peace Corps volunteers in foreign countries," and that some of the victims say "the Peace Corps has ignored safety concerns and later tried to blame the women who were raped for bringing on the attacks... Jess Smochek, 29, of Pennsylvania was gang raped in Bangladesh in 2004 by a group of young men after she says Peace Corps officials in the country ignored her pleas to re-locate her." These attacks have happened in Benin, Bangladesh, Haiti, South Africa, Georgia, and many other places. When I blogged about the subject a while back, I got one very nasty, bullying-style comment from someone who found my blog piece objectionable, and hateful towards Third Worlders, according to him. Interestingly, the comment was posted from a government facility. The tone of it was rather creepy. But that's the nature of lefties; they become nasty and hateful while deploring other people's ''hate". And when your ''hate'' is nothing but facts, backed up by links -- well, that does not stop the left from attacking.
This piece from Alternative Right is about women in the armed forces, specifically the decision to put women into combat units. I think that one point made in the article, the fact that all our institutions have been infiltrated and co-opted, is a very valid one. Most of us on the right have thought, traditionally, that the military was a last bastion of the 'old America' but we see that this is not the case, and has not been for some time.
This story from the UK has been much discussed lately, though, like the Peace Corps story, it has been known for some time, but ignored by the controlled media.
What is the common thread here? Of course leftism and political correctness drive much of the hypocrisy on these issues. But a very important part of these problems is feminism, which of course is part of the leftist subversion of Western society.
The insidious thing about feminism is that it has pervaded all segments of society; even ''conservative'' or right-wing women -- and men, often -- support feminism, and even more, without realizing it, implicitly endorse feminism and egalitarianism in all its forms. Many uninformed people on the right think it is somehow part of the 'American way' to erase all differences between people, whether racial or gender or any other innate difference.
In discussing the shooting death of a female police officer, the FReepers are divided over whether women should be in such roles, though at least one good comment is offered.
To: AbolishCSEU You are right. Even conservatives have bought into the feminist outrage at the very idea of there being any limits at all on a woman doing exactly what suits her fancy. PC has hit us all hard. - Women ARE built different than men, they don�t have the upper body strength to do certain jobs. A former military officer told me that he had women under his command and that when his company got the order to "bug out", the women couldn�t do the heavy lifting to accomplish a bug out. They�d just ignore the order to do so, and call it done. In combat, sadly, calling it done isn�t getting it done. It�s foolish and costs lives.
26 posted on Sunday, January 02, 2011 5:31:40 PM by Twinkie
I don't know who Twinkie is but she (I am assuming it is a she) makes good sense, unlike some others on that thread who spout the egalitarian party line with the best of them.
Women are different than men, and as 'Twinkie' implies, there should, accordingly, be limits on what they do, and where they go. Is this unfair? It's simple common sense.
The girls who traipse off to the Third World in some do-gooder cause, and who thus come to harm, as well as the young rape victims in the UK, and the women in the military -- all have been taught the feminist dogma that women can do anything a man can do, except beget children. ''I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman!"
Obviously women are not invincible, and women who knowingly enter into dangerous situations based on naivete and ''colorblindness'' may come to harm by having been taught that they are 'strong women' who can handle anything. And besides, everybody is the same under the skin, right?
Feminism taught that girls as young as 12 or 13 were entitled to be called ''women'' and entitled to make their own sexual choices . Young girls like those in the UK incidents likely come from 'broken homes' or homes with an absent father. Their mothers, in turn, are probably self-centered feminists who are out pursuing their own ''choices'' while their daughters go unsupervised and unguided, easy prey for the predators. Girls who are living a loose lifestyle (to use an archaic term) are vulnerable to many dangers. Girls who are out meeting grown men, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, will end up compromised at some point, bereft of inhibitions while intoxicated to insensibility, a sure recipe for disaster.
Yet women continue to insist that women should have a ''right'' to do these things: to impair themselves with drugs or alcohol, to consort with people who are a danger, to wander the streets alone (or with other females) at all hours, in bad areas -- all in the name of 'equality' and 'freedom.'
The same attitude leads young women to go into countries which are known to be dangerous, and to put themselves in risky situations -- to show that they 'trust' people, and to show their 'tolerance' -- but they too seem to think, like Helen Reddy, that they are ''invincible''.
Feminism, more than many other aspects of liberalism, has really dug in deeply into our society. It will be hard to challenge that, but it's something that has to be done.

Labels: Biased Media, Egalitarianism, Feminism

The late Dennis Wheeler, who wrote brilliantly in defense of the South, wrote the following in refutation of the Kennedy brothers' book called The South Was Right. These words seem pertinent not only to defenders of the South but to all who are tempted to compromise with political correctness and egalitarianism when defending our heritage. It can't be done, as Wheeler shows:
I have never, to my knowledge, made a statement that is not in line with the position of the Old South. The truth is that many in the Southern movement today despise the superior/inferior social order of the Old South. They really do believe the Yankee Abolitionist position of equality was morally right. And so arises the need for the plausible lie. This enables them to stand for Yankee moral principles but attribute them to the South while attributing "racial hatred" to the Yankees.
Many other examples could be given; I�ll let these be sufficient. This idea that segregation and white social and political supremacy is a Yankee idea and not a Southern idea permeates the Southern movement today. I have reason to suspect that the main impetus for this plausible lie comes from this book, The South Was Right. The plausible lie makes a mockery of truth and the South. The portion of the Southern movement that is advancing the plausible lie is on a go-nowhere treadmill. This is because no advancement can take place for the South until the Yankee equalitarianism that has permeated America is destroyed.
And the reason for this should be clear: No pro-Southern equalitarian can erect any social order that is in one wit better than the one Northern equalitarians erected and in which we now live. Therefore, no matter how many flags and monuments are saved in heritage battles, no matter how many pro-Southern politicians are elected to office, no matter how many new members are recruited into the ranks of Southern organizations, no effective change can be wrought in our society until the principles of Yankee Abolitionist equalitarianism are refuted and overthrown.
[...]
To argue for the South within the framework of the Yankee equalitarian moral system is like trying to fit square pegs into round holes. It is as dishonest as the system our conquerors imposed upon us. And it is dishonorable for Southern men to be dishonest in their presentation of the issues pressing on the South today.''
Along the same lines are these words of Robert Salyer in a piece called Reconstruction and Nationalism:
''Southerners imbued with the egalitarian perspective of right and wrong are complicit in a public policy in the United States that aims at a society hereinafter undifferentiated, held together only by amorphous civic feeling. It is this complicity, and nothing else, that renders the South of today prostrate.
[...]
It is not true that humans have a duty to treat with identical dignity and identical concern every other human being on the planet solely by virtue of being of the species Homo Sapiens. This is the claim of Equality, the claim of Abolitionism, the claim of all modern Human Rights Campaigns, and it is simply unfounded. And it is unfounded because it is not true, because it is immoral.
Humans are social animals, and societies are organic. They have design, form, and a kind of soul in the whole. Rights exist only in society, and society accords different roles, corresponding rights, and different ranks to different members of society. Having such and such number of chromosomes does not, in and of itself, entitle one to freedom or anything else.''
These issues, obviously, are at the heart of most of what ails our society and the whole Western world today. It is around these issues that we will either stand or fall.

Labels: Egalitarianism, North Vs South, Political Correctness

On this blog, we return every so often to the discussion of culture vs. race, or nature vs. nurture, if you like.
Over at TakiMag, there is a piece by John Derbyshire in which he addresses this issue.
Derbyshire discusses how some, who, although believing that human beings evolved in Africa 50,000 years ago, then stopped evolving suddenly after dispersing throughout the world, in groups widely separated from one another.
That does seem quite a contradiction for those who believe in evolution. How does one rationalize or explain away this sudden stop in what is supposed to be an ongoing process? How can it be that the races of human beings, despite the great variations in appearance, are still somehow exactly the same in all the ways that matter?
He discusses how the idea of the 'psychic unity of mankind' was developed by Adolph Bastian and then later by Franz Boas, who is one of the most influential figures in anthropology and sociology. So much of the 'thinking', if it can be called that, of liberal egalitarians is based on Franz Boas' theories.
This idea of the "psychic unity of mankind" is a sort of blank slate principle. It says that all human beings everywhere have the same physiological nature, most especially the same brains, and that all observed differences, both group and individual, are the result of "culture" acting on this infinitely plastic substratum�writing words on this "blank slate."
"Blank slate" is in fact sometimes used as an identifier for this point of view�this belief in the psychic unity of mankind. It is also sometimes called a "Boasian" viewpoint in honor of Franz Boas�poor Bastian seems to have been forgotten.
[...]
Those of you who like to trace things back through the history of philosophy will recognize culturism as an extreme form of existentialism. In philosophical jargon your essence is what you are, as it might be put on a police WANTED poster: white male, 190 lbs, married two children, etc. Your existence is that you are�the fact of your being in the world. The old philosophical conundrum is: Which comes first, essence or existence? Do you come into the world with preset atrributes�the essentialist position? Or do you come in as a blank slate, and have to get some attributes for yourself, as the mid-20th-century Existentialists argued, or have them imposed on you by your social conditions, modes of production, and so on, as classical Marxism argued? ''
I had never thought of this culturalist 'blank slate' theory as being existentialist, but it is that. And as Derbyshire notes, our offical dogma in this society is 'an extreme existentialist one.' It's usually expressed as the utopian notion that we can all, or each of us as individuals, do anything and be anything we wish to be. And if we fail to do so, it's because of some environmental cause; opportunity has been cruelly denied us, holding us back from achieving our dreams.
Obviously, as we've discussed here before, if we believe, as the doctrinaire blank-slate egalitarians do, that everybody is equal in potential, then we have to find some explanation for why certain groups fail to achieve on an equal level. If we refuse dogmatically to accept that because races are intrinsically different, each group has differing abilities, then we have to resort to blaming any disparities on 'racism'. Of course, the all-encompassing belief in racism accepts as a given that White people are being gratuitously malicious towards nonwhites, thwarting their every effort to achieve. This is unfair to minorities in that it gives them a false diagnosis of the problem, rendering a realistic solution nearly impossible, but even more, it is unfair to Whites who are labeled as born 'racists' who are guilty whether they acknowledge it or not. It is slanderous; it amounts to calling Whites an innately evil group of people, and the only people capable of what is now considered (by our liberal society) the worst of all human evils -- ''racism.''
Our educational bureaucracy and our politically correct politicians who set policy are invested in egalitarian belief, and so they are forced to keep re-enacting this absurd play in which certain racial/ethnic groups fall short in academic achievement, followed by the ritualistic response that 'racism' is keeping these groups from ''closing the achievement gap.'' The vast sums of money our governments spend on trying to equalize the races is never enough to close the persistent gap, and no amount of money can ever be enough, apparently. Yet this charade goes on and on, with no end in sight. Worse, the 'achievement gap' issue is further complicated by the introduction of yet other ethnic/racial groups who also fail to compete academically as egalitarian dogmas imply they should. So now we have not only the black/White 'achievement gap' to fret about, but also the Hispanic/White gap. And on it goes.
The egalitarian is forced to resort to the belief that 'culture' causes all significant differences among the races, and that if we just 'assimilate' everyone to our ways, they will be just the same as we are, and will eventually achieve at equivalent levels. If not, it's because we have not done enough to bridge the cultural divide. Or it's because Whites are so incorrigibly 'racist.'
So this stubborn belief in egalitarianism of course entails more spending of money, and renewed efforts to indoctrinate teachers and citizens in the belief that we are all really equal, but for culture, and culture can be taught or shared. More propaganda is generated in an attempt to 'correct' the attitudes of 'racist' Whites, and more 'hate speech' laws are passed to curtail the evil of 'racism.'
According to the blank-slate believers, inequality has nothing whatsoever to do with race or genetics. It has only to do with 'culture', and culture apparently grows out of the ground, or falls out of the sky like rain; it does not grow out of the soul and mind of a particular people or race.
It is not just the extreme left egalitarians who believe this; just visit any mainstream 'conservative' forum and you will find many staunch Republicans protesting that ''Bill Cosby is right; blacks just have to learn how to succeed in majority culture and give up the ghetto culture.''
Thomas Sowell wrote that black social pathologies were caused by their exposure to 'redneck culture' in the South. Again, a 'conservative' variation on the old evil Whitey explanation for everything.
Many 'conservatives' believe that Hispanics ''will assimilate just like everybody else, if you give them a generation or two. After all, the [insert favorite European ethnic group name here] assimilated." They say the same about even more exotic peoples such as Somalis or Hmongs. The belief is that they will all become as American as apple pie, given enough time and exposure to our 'culture.'
For an illustration of how the debate on culture vs. genetics goes, just read the discussion on this blog thread regarding the Walmart trampling death. The 'r-word' flies, and denials likewise follow. This kind of back-and-forth is never-ending.
Stating a belief in innate racial differences, especially where behavior is concerned, draws accusations of 'racism' just about every time.
So most "conservatives" fall back on the idea of culture as being the determinant, although nobody ever answers the question of how culture develops. There is an implicit belief that culture just happens, or that it's comparable to a suit of clothes that we can put on or take off at will.
Everybody is equally capable, apparently, of adopting any culture. How certain ethnicities and races come to have distinct cultures, that are unique to them alone, is never discussed, much less explained.
Derbyshire alludes to the reaction James Watson experienced when he stated a simple belief in IQ differences among the races.
But since the feared results of believing such differences exist are considered undesirable by liberals and egalitarians, the idea of differences must be banished from polite discussion. Any heretic who expresses such a belief must be dealt with by ostracism, job loss, re-education, or whatever means, in order that the forbidden idea not be spread.
But until or unless we can honestly acknowledge the simple and self-evident fact that we are not blank slates and not all ''the same under the skin", this pattern will persist. The endless laments about 'achievement gaps' and 'the failure of our schools' and our 'failure to integrate and assimilate' everyone, and the endless accusations of racism in all its various forms, all will continue, and the frictions attendant on these accusations will increase.
If you read the comments at TakiMag following Derbyshire's article, you will notice that one rather angry liberal commenter shows that he is fearful of the results which might follow an acceptance of innate racial differences. He mentions 'eugenics', for example. I don't know whether the commenter eventually will resort to the old reductio ad Hitlerum, but I would not be surprised.
Why do people, or liberals, I should say, fiercely resist the idea of innate differences? Is it because of their dogmatic belief that we all have a right to self-create and self-define? Or are they really fearful that some kind of totalitarian policies would be implicit in the idea of differences?
Many of the people who express these kinds of fears are members of minority groups (sometimes ethnic Whites) who feel themselves to be endangered by an acknowledgement of ethnic and racial differences. Some of these people identify strongly with nonwhites, and have a knee-jerk resistance to any ideas which they deem potentially ''racist".
I am not surprised that the leftists and liberals cling fiercely to their egalitarian, blank slate belief system. Reality never intersects with their perceptions. But I am perpetually frustrated that many who are somewhat more to the right, who pride themselves on being 'realistic', insist on mouthing the same platitudes as the left-liberals. How do we get past this?

Labels: Cultural Marxism, Egalitarianism, Liberalism, Race Denial, Racial Guilt

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.

Labels: American Identity, Conservatism, Conservative Principles, Egalitarianism, Heritage

I've mentioned before that I collect ephemera, my favorite era being the early 20th century. I love learning about earlier times from the ephemera of the age: written material, magazines, even the ads tell a story. The artwork and the illustrations were often beautiful, much more so than today's counterparts.
One thing that catches my eye in the old ads and magazine articles is the presence of many upper-class people, dressed in their finery, attending some soigné event. Many of the domestic scenes in advertising depict elegant women at home with their housemaids. This kind of thing is conspicuously absent in our modern advertising, for obvious reasons. The world has turned upside down from what it was 100 years, or even 70 years ago. The egalitarian, downward-leveling trend has become the hallmark of our age. There are no clear class delineations as there were back then, with moneyed people and their luxuries. Nowadays, the rich often dress, act, and speak just like those at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Think Paris Hilton.
And since the English language is on my mind these last few days, coincidentally I was just at a forum where the discussion centered on class
distinctions in the UK as reflected in language.
Apparently, there remain, despite all the leveling efforts of the leftists, differences in vocabulary as well as pronunciation in the UK.
This article from long-ago 1992 describes the class patterns in British English:
John Honey, an itinerant English professor educated at Cambridge and Oxford who is currently teaching in Japan, created a stir in Britain when his book was published. He urged Britons to acknowledge that speech accents are the coding of the class system and to strike a blow for equality by teaching everyone to speak the Queen's English, which Honey termed "received pronunciation," or R.P. The classic example of R.P. would be the crisp, clipped speech of most BBC news readers.
The Charles-Di split, then, is a matter of two different styles of upper-class speech. Prince Charles speaks a marked version of R.P. -- the upper-crust English, oozing privilege, spoken today mainly by senior members of the royal family, old Etonians and aging Oxford and Cambridge dons. R.P. speakers pronounce "cloth" as clawth and talk about the lorst pah of the British Empah (the "lost power of the British Empire").
Princess Diana has swung to the other end of the R.P. spectrum, occasionally assuming a trendy down-market variant, including traces of popular London speech, that approaches cockney. Its most prominent feature is "t-glotalling," which means strangling the final "t" in most words. Expert ears, for example, have detected Diana saying there's a lo' of i' abou' for "there's a lot of it about." '
From the perspective of today, it would appear that the 'received pronunciation' has long since lost the battle. I've noticed how 'the Queen's English' has been displaced in the British media by various regional accents and by more 'working-class' patterns of speech. When I watch old British films, (for example, today I saw ''Great Expectations" from 1946), the English spoken then is markedly different than that heard in the British media today.
There may be some of the older generation whose accents follow the old patterns but they seem to be few and far between.
I believe the cultural Marxists want to eliminate anything that hints at ''elitism'' and class distinctions and standards, the latter of which are
anathema to them in all areas of life. In the UK as in the United States and throughout the West, there is the mania for 'equality' and for a malicious pulling-down of those who are looked at superior or elite in some way.
And that, to me, is the crux of this issue of class distinctions in speech. The left is always busily destroying all vestiges of our former standards and ideals. Having distinctions of any kind amounts to ''discrimination" and this must always be stamped out.
This piece cuts to the chase, regarding speech:
Every detail of our selves and our lives � our appearance, speech, activities and associations � is perceived by others as an emblem of who we were, what we have become and where we fit in. The social profile of each person is recognizable and unique, like a fingerprint.
The ways we speak also reflect this combination of social similarity and diversity in fine detail.
[...]
Language has always helped to signify who we are in society, sometimes serving as a basis for exclusion. A Bible story tells how a password, shibboleth, was chosen because the enemy didn�t use the sh sound. "Shibboleth" has since come to signify an emblem of belief or membership, an identifiable sign of those who must stay outside the gate.
Societies use shibboleths in many ways. Indeed, speech is a convenient stand-in for other kinds of stigma that we recognize but do not openly acknowledge. For example, in our society, discrimination based on appearance, race, sex, religion or national origin is TABOO and often illegal, whereas discrimination based on particular details of language use by men or women, people of different religions, people from other countries and so on is often allowed.''
Do we have any class distinctions in speech in the United States? I would say we don't. It may be that some traditionally-minded people are unfavorably disposed towards those who have very uneducated speech, or strong regional accents in some cases. But this need not necessarily reflect a class bias, or a racial bias. We just tend to react somewhat negatively to someone who displays ignorance in their way of speaking.
It's often said, with some truth in the allegation, that people tend to judge those who speak with a Southern accent as ''ignorant'' or backward, even if the speaker uses impeccable grammar and syntax. The accent itself bears a stigma, I would say as much or more than ''ebonics''. And you'll notice I didn't specify that ''Northern people tend to judge'' Southern accents negatively -- just ''people.'' There are some who are born and bred in the South who carefully cultivate a neutral accent, modeling it on the media standard. Many of the younger generations do not sound Southron at all, even if their parents speak with a strong regional accent. I think this move away from the Southern speech is sometimes not a conscious thing; it's simply 'in' to speak standard American English as heard on TV or in Hollywood movies. Younger people who watch the mainstream media consciously or unconsciously absorb the accent they hear; it has connotations of being hip and cool, unlike the Southern drawl.
Other than that, however, we don't have a great deal of class distinction in our speech. Education these days does not do a very good job of educating. Sadly, most of those in academia these days are dedicated leftists who think that proper grammar and enunciation are ''elitist' and outmoded, as well as 'reactionary'. So who is there to uphold standards of good grammar and speech?
The linked PBS article argues (just as my linguistics professor did back in the 70s) that language is perpetually changing, and that we mustn't try to stop or impede the change. Language is 'organic', so the party line says. Languages just grow, like Topsy, and we can't control or even direct the change that inevitably happens. We can be 'descriptive' in discussing language, in other words, simply observe and note what we see and hear, but we can't be 'prescriptive' and uphold standards -- because everything is relative, you see. Who are we to judge the ebonics speakers or those who speak some sort of pidgin English or Spanglish or whatever argot?
A complex pattern of influences keeps the linguistic pot bubbling. Variation is everywhere. Change never stops. Language gatekeepers cannot control an ever-changing world of diversity. It�s hard on them, because in the gatekeepers' world, variation means error and change means decline.
What�s more, the very notion of a single standard of correctness in language is quite recent. "Correctness" is based solely on a purist�s own notion of what is socially or culturally correct: if it's not in, it must be out. A language purist works from a list of exceptions to the rule, ordinary speakers follow a hierarchy of patterns that reveal analogical similarities.''
Yes, the usual leftist arguments are heard in the realm of linguistics as in all other areas. Change is inevitable; embrace it. Celebrate it. Above all, don't judge it. Don't try to control it or contain it.
Change is sacred to the leftist.
And we ''language purists' who think (silly us) that there are rules and standards which apply to language just as to any other system, and who think that we should try to contain and direct change, are just sticks-in-the-mud who are impeding the 'diversity' and the richness of our ever-changing language.
I suppose we have to give the left some kind of credit for being consistent in their 'philosophy'. They are consistent to the point of being monomaniacal, when it comes to advancing their agenda in every area of life.
The larger question, though, is the loss of standards in our society.
I suppose it could be said that the beginnings of our country already contained the seed of our current obsession with 'equality' and leveling, which we see in the assault on all standards. Proper speech is now denigrated as archaic and rigid, the province of 'language purists'. Basic etiquette and social graces are scoffed at as passé and old-fashioned. Dress codes are going by the wayside, as people more and more tend to dress for 'comfort', regardless of the occasion. There are very few occasions for which Americans dress up nowadays. Jeans and T-shirts and athletic shoes are the universal uniform for all occasions from church on Sunday to the symphony. As I mentioned, even the wealthy are likely to slouch around in the ''uniform'' when in public.
Sexual mores, like all social standards, are now strictly up to the individual; who are we to judge? Tolerance of anything and everything is a mark of the sophisticated, ''enlightened'' 21st century American.
Profanity and obscenity are everywhere, with no respect for the people present. Oldsters, toddlers, nobody is spared the foul language.
The arts are no longer governed by any sort of rules regarding aesthetics or skill. This is true of the so-called 'fine arts' as well as popular culture.
Mediocrity and even ineptitude are no obstacle to attaining fame or success in the arts and popular entertainment.
Good taste has gone out the window; once I tried to discuss 'taste' with a liberal friend; it was a foreign language to her. ''Taste'' is an elitist construct, imposed by the aristocracy on the sainted common man.
The sad thing about all this is that the ''conservatives'' for the most part are rank egalitarians and levelers in most respects, just as the liberals and leftists. Perhaps the old American obsession with demolishing social class in general, the tradition of hating aristocracy, has gone too far. It seems to me that even conservatives have accepted many of the class warfare bromides of the left.
Our country was born from a revolution against English royalty, and there was an anti-aristocratic undertone to the slogans and sentiments of many of the Founding Fathers -- yet there was a movement to make George Washington a king, rather than President.
There was an old Southron aristocracy, and I am sure there were wastrels and other undesirables among their ranks, but on the other hand, many good men came out of that class: the aforementioned Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Lees, the Pages, the Randolphs, the Taylors, and many more. Aristocracy is not an innately bad thing, provided they are principled.
Can anyone argue that democracy is preferable? How is it working out for us now?
Our forefathers, at least the Founding Fathers, opposed the idea of democracy and 'equality', despite Thomas Jefferson's unfortunate phrase ''all men are created equal."
Democracy does not exist for a long time - it wastes, exhausts and destroys itself. There was never a democracy that didn't kill itself" - Samuel Adams
"Democracy always leads to conflicts and instability, but never provides for the security of the citizens or their property. Usually it is very short at life, and very bloody at death" -- James Madison
There are many more such quotes in the same vein. Yet somehow Americans have become enamored of 'democracy' and equality.
Equality and liberty can't coexist. Neither can equality and standards. If we are to level everybody, standards must be pulled down; those who excel or distinguish themselves in any way are to be pounded down so as to prevent inequality.
Not so many decades ago, we had a culture which encouraged all, rich, poor, or middle-class, to aspire to civilized, genteel behavior. Children were taught to be polite and courteous, and respectful of elders. Girls, in particular, were taught social graces and were often sent to 'charm school' to learn how to groom themselves, carry themselves, and to be gracious.
Everybody could, and most did, aspire to ''better themselves." Even those from a poor background could become educated, or educate themselves, acquire some social polish, and improve their status in the world. Now, it seems every economic class emulates the lowest level of society. The gutter culture is 'cool.'
The old-style rich in America were standard-bearers. While there were 'black sheep' among them, in general they comported themselves well in public; it was considered part of the duty of the 'upper classes' to set an example. Now that we no longer have a wealthy class with any sense of noblesse oblige, or with a desire to uphold higher standards of behavior, we have no exemplars at all, except vapid celebrities, who are often troubled people with no detectable standards. Or there are the overpaid athletes who are idolized by many.
On this blog we've often discussed the leadership void. Leaders need not be politicians or 'statesmen' -- and how many of the latter even exist today? Leaders are standard-bearers and standard-setters. They are people who, at their best, honor and uphold social and cultural standards and traditions, and set an inspiring example. We all need something to which to aspire, and we all need to aspire to something honorable and worthy. We have few if any such leaders and standard-bearers now. I wonder if, by killing our aristocracy metaphorically, we have done ourselves in. We can see in history how much harm was caused by the Jacobins and their obliterating of class distinctions.
Standards are necessary; our mania for 'democracy' and 'equality' is proving to be very destructive to our society. I believe any effort to undo all the horrendous errors of the last five decades or so must include a renewed respect for quality, excellence, merit, and achievement, as well as for order and beauty.
We live in an ugly, sloppy age dominated by willful adolescents. At some point, the adults will have to reassert control.
The liberals say 'change never stops', and if they are right, then the pendulum has to swing back eventually.

Labels: Egalitarianism, English Language, History, Leadership, Social Class, Social Conservatism, Societal Decay