Comments

There Are 89 Responses So Far. »

1. 1 Comment by Edward on 28 February 2008:

   “Who has thought about the proper ends of man and society? Who has more than a superficial relationship to the two millennia of Western culture?”

   It’s very telling that these two undeniably essential questions would be met with quizzical looks by the media elite. Obama, Hillary, and McCain are the end product of a civilization that ignores its own history and disparages its own tradition. We have severed the branch we are sitting on from the tree to which we are connected. May God Help Us.

2. 2 Comment by roho on 28 February 2008:

   Good article Mr. Wilson……….It is universal in all of Serfdom, that “armed and dangerous tax collectors” wait to ambush the Continental Citizenry” like Lions hunting zebra on the plains of Africa!…..Pirates or Highwaymen, as they were called centuries ago. Perhaps you live in a quite bedroom community, where the city council denied raises? (Always proceded by “Your Department isn’t bringing in enough revenue to get one of those tank looking things!”)

3. 3 Comment by Horace Grady on 28 February 2008:

   A few minutes ago, Barck Obama’s foreign policy advisor Susan Rice was on the Tucker Carlson show. Susan Rice,an upper class DC mulatto married to a White Canadian ,is pure drek. The difference between McCain’s and Obama’s foriegn policy is sleight The empire will define the terms of the debate. The empire will be protected. Mostly White teenagers will be required to defend it.

   An Obama presidency will speed up the Native Born White Revolt. Worse is better.

   Barack Obama is owned by the corporations. Justin Raimondo is fawning all over Obama these days. Raimondo is a fool. Some people are easily fooled

4. 4 Comment by Albert on 28 February 2008:

   “It’s very telling that these two undeniably essential questions would be met with quizzical looks by the media elite. Obama, Hillary, and McCain are the end product of a civilization that ignores its own history and disparages its own tradition. We have severed the branch we are sitting on from the tree to which we are connected. May God Help Us.” -Edward

   Okee’doh’kee:

   “I AM the tree of Life standing in the middle of the Eternal Sea whose roots sink down to an eternal source…The people are the eternal sea enveloping the huge tree of life and taking its root within.”

   I – a mere mortal will just add – don’t be extreme move again in the correct direction best embodied by Ron Paul and in a pinch Ralph Nader – but is yet too extreme for most Americans who have been set BACK (on purpose) by their media. They will fall soon.
   _________________________________________________

5. 5 Comment by roger on 28 February 2008:

   Mr Wilson is pinpointing a lot of problems, but he does not mention the real problem. The real problem is that USA is not a democracy any longer, and has not been a democracy for a very long time. It does not matter who is “elected” (or rather selected) president, because the president is only a puppet anyway and takes his (or hers) orders from the shadow goverment. The shadow government springs out from the corporations and the military-industrial complex, and the shadow government owns the president and his administration, the congress and the press. What can be done? Or can anything be done? I don’t know, but it is at least obvious that, thanks to the internet, more and more people become aware of the terrible situation that we are in. Maybe the slide into martial law and the police state may be halted and reversed if a sufficient number of brave people take action. Let’s pray and hope that it is not too late.

6. 6 Comment by James Newland on 28 February 2008:

   “When one puts forth a proposition, whether about current events or history, mainstream intellectuals (and their vast numbers of wannabe-intellectual lackeys) do not answer with argument or evidence. They merely dismiss you as one who is not smart enough to know the accepted ideas; rather like someone who wears white socks to a formal affair.”

   Amen, Dr. Wilson. Few are they who can actually construct a rational argument addressing the issues in dispute, and even fewer they who feel the need to. To the ideologue and the ignoramus, who are by nature people who must avoid serious argument at all costs, the salient question is only whether you are of the “in” crowd or the “out” crowd. If you’re not one of them, well, “We already know where you’re coming from,” even when they manifestly do not.

   “No Republican will dare bring out any of his numerous negative factors—that would be forbidden ‘racism.’”

   Myself, I’m honestly not sure that’s the reason. Obama’s such a genuinely likable fellow on a personal level that I think people are saying to themselves, “He may be a flaming liberal, but he seems willing to listen at least, and in any case both Clinton and McCain turn my stomach.” Larry Elder here in L.A., black himself, keeps making the same point on the radio that you make, but no one really wants to talk about it. The conversation always gets dragged back to what a couple of ahemholes C & M are.

7. 7 Comment by Albert on 28 February 2008:

   In the final end he won the war after losing every battle…

   “And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
   Praising thy worth despite his cruel hand.” – Shakespeare

8. 8 Comment by Edward on 28 February 2008:

   The problem perhaps lies with the people. If the people were properly grounded in the truths of Western religious tradition, we might be more skeptical of politicians in general instead of being overwhelmed and enamored by the quasi-religious movement that is the Obama campaign.

   What people truly need to resist is the idea that humanity’s salvation lies within politics. Modern American politics is generally concerned with large-scale “solutions” that are inherently inimical to most people’s way of life. Politicians like Obama who are always speaking of “hope” and “change” will be met with proper scrutiny once people remove their faith in the religion of democracy and place it in the right Source.

9. 9 Comment by Caper on 28 February 2008:

   “Thus our “news” is trivial, amorphous, anonymous, and conformist, for petty ideologues who lack any genuine knowledge and moral authority cannot be otherwise. Who are these people? Where do they come from? Who were their parents? How were they educated? What previous record of character and knowledge have they established? ”

   Patrick J. Buchanan is all over, and I mean *all over,* MSNBC news. Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, and Joe Scarborough, however much one may despise them, are hardly “amorphous, anonymous, and conformist.” They all talk about their past experiences and how they influence how they think about current events. One MSNBC morning host is the daughter of a certain Mr. Brzezinski. I am not saying that this qualifies her or disqualifies her, only that she is not anonymous. I do not see where Dr. Wilson is coming from. Perhaps he is thinking of some other network? Well, in the case of the one I watch, his observations are incorrect. The network is not in the least bit “anonymous,” and most of them do have some genuine information however much you may question their moral authority.

10. 10 Comment by Edward on 28 February 2008:

    Patrick J. Buchanan aside, MSNBC is the most overtly leftist “news” channel on TV. Not only does Keith Olbermann’s channel refuse to suspend it’s ideology for the sake of intelligent inquiry, but Chris Matthews recently reported a distinct “thrill going up his leg” after hearing Obama deliver one of his salvific speeches.

    Dr. Wilson has precisely described most of the faces that populate our “news” channels: petty ideologues.

11. 11 Comment by Albert on 28 February 2008:

    Media.

12. 12 Comment by Caper on 28 February 2008:

    Yes, Keith Olbermann is abominable.

    Tucker Carlson is an avid fan of Ron Paul, and makes no secret of this. Is he a leftist?

    Is Joe Scarborough a leftist? He actually had Jared Taylor, of all people, on his show.

    Are they petty ideologues? Or people you simply dislike? Most people would say similar things about Chronicles writers. Who are they? Where did they come from? If I wish to know where Tim Russert came from, who his parents where, what his experiences have been, I can go read his book, thank you.

13. 13 Comment by Caper on 28 February 2008:

    Conformism: Isn’t the real problem that they conform to a line with which we disagree? If the networks hired only Lincoln-hating, pro-Confederate, seal-the-Mexican-border-and-deport-Moslems, would paleocons be upset with this conformism? Conformity is not the problem, but conformity to what is wrong. I admit that Chris Matthews conforms to the dominant ideology, but he does ask questions and he does refuse to accept mealy-mouthed non-answers. I have seen it.

14. 14 Comment by Caper on 28 February 2008:

    “Lincoln-hating . . . -deport-Moslems”

    Insert “newscasters” at the end of that.

15. 15 Comment by JJ Korman on 28 February 2008:

    All things to the memory blackhole!
    “Those that refuse to study the past are condemned to repeat it”
    Santyana

16. 16 Comment by Edward on 28 February 2008:

    The only problem is that newscasters such as Chris Matthews and Tim Russert refuse to admit that they are leftists. Do the estimable writers at Chronicles purport the same false facade of objectivity? Of course they don’t, and they shouldn’t. I do not agree with most of the faces of MSNBC, but the reason I find many of them shameful and not merely men of respectable but divergent opinion is that they claim to be just “after the facts.”

    If Chris Matthews proclaimed on national television that he was a liberal, I would still find him repulsive to watch, but then it would be only a matter of my personal taste. I would not consider him a participant in the “trivial, amorphous, anonymous, and conformist” news.

17. 17 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 28 February 2008:

    Matthews and Russert don’t realize they are leftists, but hell, neither do O’Reilly, Hannity, Coulter, the NR crowd, the neo-cons, and the whole Bush administration. Leftism is the prevailing climate of thought and it is difficult to escape its presuppositions. #5 Roger, for example, states that the real problem is that the US is no longer a democracy. Democracy is one of the core values of the left and the US was never supposed to be a democracy.

18. 18 Comment by Caper on 28 February 2008:

    “I would not consider him a participant in the “trivial, amorphous, anonymous, and conformist” news.”

    Once again, it is not anonymous. Rather, it is personality-driven, if anything. Matthews, Russert, and the FOX News crowd all have books talking about their views, their upbringing, etc. Whether you think their lives are worthwhile or not, they are not anonymous. Tim Russert talks about his father all the time. Matthews refers constantly to his upbringing in Philadelphia. One morning Russert, Buchanan, Matthews, and Mike Barnacle were all on TV at the same time and the running joke among the other commentators was that these four Irish-Catholic boys never learned their manners from the nuns in parochial school and they sure weren’t going to learn now. If your primary concern is with the newscasters being of obscure origin and obscure pedigree, what more could you possibly want?

    Buchanan is on MSNBC several times a week, at least. They let him talk over the other commentators (he has a bad habit of this). So paleoconservatives are overrepresented on that station in proportion to their presence in the American body politic.

19. 19 Comment by Ronald Kyser on 28 February 2008:

    “A strongly shared sense of right and wrong… is what kept the South relatively free of violent racial strife…”

    Well, yes, but I suspect the selective application of gun control had a hand in this as well. Southerners were 275 years ahead of the rest of the country in that policy area, and no one ever gives them credit for it.

20. 20 Comment by Caper on 28 February 2008:

    Plus, Tucker Carlson, the avid fan of Ron Paul, has repeatedly said, openly, “Yes, the media gives Obama a free pass and grills Clinton.”

    And as for last week’s stupid and slimy report about McCain by the New York Times, the TV news people almost all rejected the story out of hand on account of its lack of sources, as they should have.

21. 21 Comment by Rublev's Dog on 29 February 2008:

    roger (#5) most of what you say is true and I appreciate your sentiment. However, it is because America ceased to be a Republic and instead devolved into a unitary, national democracy that it gave itself over to managerial elite rule — to those who appeal to the largely uninfomed and short-sighted masses.

    Ah, the joys of the universal suffrage….

22. 22 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 29 February 2008:

    Capers, I did not say the newscasters are “anonymous…conformist, etc.” I said the “news” is.
    They all follow the same script as to what is worthy of notice and the same adolescent short-term time perspective. I don’t understand where you are coming from in defending these people

23. 23 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 29 February 2008:

    These people are part of a tiny minority who have the power to filter and dictate the “news” for millions of people. We have no sayso over their selection or over those who select them. What wisdom have they shown to entitle themselves to such power?

24. 24 Comment by Thomas Flinn on 29 February 2008:

    Frankly, I doubt if any of the potential presidents even know what western (read, Catholic/Christian, European) civilzation is, much less how to defend it. Unfortunately, I am not so sure they even believe it is worth defending. I am sure Obama and Clinton don’t. AFter all it is responsible for all, and I mean ALL, the world’s problems from war, famine, and disease to too-tight underwear. I saw Pat Buchanan get into last night with liberal Bill Press about the fact that it was largely WHITE MALES who died at Lexington and Concord, Gettysburg and Normandy. I told my family that all of us racist, homophobic, anti-semitic, fascist European Americans should say to the rest of the country, “Kiss off. You’re on your own. We will no longer work, fight, pay taxes, build businesses or anything else that is required to build a real civilization. Let the hispanic invaders and all the other minority groups do it all. Let’s see how long it takes to turn the country into a wasteland.” But then I realize that if it weren’t for so many European Americans (like Bill Press) slobbering all over themselves about how great it will be to have a mixed-race person or a woman as president we might not be in this mess. The guilt of white liberals (except in regard to the Seven Deadly Sins), is phenomenal. I suppose if Obama is elected they can all gather round at their cocktail parties and congratulate themselves on how open minded they are and morally superior to all the great unwashed.

    Speaking of Obama, he may very well beomce president. I will give him this: he is SLICK. As Bert Reynolds put it in one of his more forgettable movies, “He is slicker than cat s–t on linoleum.” But then, isn’t that what we want? It is apparently what the Democrats want. The GOP wants a candidate who isn’t afraid to bomb everyone on the planet. Let’s see, what are the qualifications? Obama is “black,” Hilary is a woman, and McCain is a war hero. Case closed.

    I am rambling a bit here, but did anyone else notice that when Obama was asked to repudiate Farrakhan’s support he simply said he rejected “minister” Farrakhan’s anti-semitic statements. Two points: (1) to refer to this racist loudmouth as “minister” seems a bit too respectful and (2) he did not repudiate Farrakhan’s many anti-white statements. Was that a slip up?

    Finally, Dr. Wilson is right on (as usual) regarding the media. I watched Keith Olberman (once) and listened to a nearly half hour raving rant that would have had anyone with more conservative (I prefer Rightist, as the neo-cons are the only”true” conservatives these days!!), views thrown off the air in a heartbeat. He sounded like a drunken frat boy. I kept turning to another station only to turn back to him ten minutes later to see if he was still raving. He was. I never liked Walter Cronkite when I was younger, but he seems like a paragon of virtue compared to what is on the air now.

25. 25 Comment by Jon W. on 29 February 2008:

    If a law does not align itself with a Constitution, first formed with the belief that some rights are inaliable, ordained by God, and a commentator, newscaster, editorial, Statute, Rules of civil and criminal procedure or “public policy” does not align with the Constitution and Word of God, then it matters little to me how and why we got here. THe opinions of those who deny the existance of God or the foundation of our Constitutional theory for which our law and public policy are bound, then I know those people are not worthy of time or conversation. For they will appeal to some “theory” of man, Marx, Obama, Bush, to form their opinion.

    Millions are waking up to the truth that things are not right in river city. What will only and properly form a coalition from the masses is their belief and faith in the Word of God. Those who are incapable of this, will never bond with any group. They will scream injustice and get nowhere.

    What is really scary to me, is that those who claim to be leaders under the authority of God are not under the authority of God. Dr. Dobson, is a prime example. Or, many of the christian legal groups defending the rights of parents, (Jay Sekulo). Sekulo appeals to the authority of international courts and Dobson appeals to psychobabble to align the broken home. Though they wear the robe of rightiousness, they appeal to the magistrate of the pharisee. I don’t claim to know what is in their heart, I simply align their practices with the truth, and clutch my stomach in pain.

    Mr. Wilson experiences and observations are absolutely true. And it warms my heart knowing so many are awaken and alive.

26. 26 Pingback by The Way We Are Now | Odessa Syndicate on 29 February 2008:

    [...] Wilson writes dismissively of the American [...]

27. 27 Comment by Dennis Larkin on 29 February 2008:

    It was Belloc who noted that snobs comprise a large part of many societies. These are people who think and say certain things because they are the received wisdom, because certain things are expectetd to be believed and said, not because these folks have investigated things for themelves. America is awash in snobs.

28. 28 Comment by Edward on 29 February 2008:

    “Kiss off. You’re on your own. We will no longer work, fight, pay taxes, build businesses or anything else that is required to build a real civilization. Let the hispanic invaders and all the other minority groups do it all. Let’s see how long it takes to turn the country into a wasteland.”

    I must say that this idea appeals to me greatly. I live in New York City and if I described the black population here with as much ignorant generality as liberals do with Western Civilization, I would be put before the firing squad by every pseudo-intellectual I attend college with.

    Mr. Flinn’s other observation that it is usually white, western liberals who are the first to accuse conservatives of being racist, sexist, and homophobic is only more shocking than it is true. As Orwell says of nationalism, “…millions of people can be confidently labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad’.” They will forever demarcate the West as morally reprehensible, and it is more than unfortunate that these elitists dominate and manufacture our “news.”

29. 29 Comment by Albert on 29 February 2008:

    “These people are part of a tiny minority who have the power to filter and dictate the “news” for millions of people. We have no sayso over their selection or over those who select them. What wisdom have they shown to entitle themselves to such power?” -Clyde

    that you even must ask this question on essentially a site sympathetic – they have NO authority except your congress was bought … and once the brainwashing begins… then even on your sympathetic site, sadly, you’re on the defensive.

    why do you put up with it, is what i wonder?

    am i missing something?

    god’s NOT in control of everything…

    is it the mistaken notion he is in control of that?

    what would be the point of wisdom… what would be the point of Actual others… besides Himself?

30. 30 Comment by Bill Temple on 29 February 2008:

    Mr. Albert – I think the answer to yours above is that this is a site of culture… if you want one of revolution or whatever – I suppose they are online too.

    Although I’ll say this – they attack ‘themselves’ now to prime the pump and pop billions out of the fed treasury –

    So if you, for example albert just suggest burning down the networks if we want to stay alive – as I’ve heard and read you – that may be kind compared to their nuking a city so we’ll go to world war III against the so-called “arabs” – The other SEMITES.

    I hear you too on that level – funny, – sadly.
    ________________

31. 31 Comment by roho on 1 March 2008:

    We have now arrived at the point where, the only “Manufacturing Base” existing in America is the MSM!

32. 32 Comment by woodcutter on 1 March 2008:

    “Thus our “news” is trivial, amorphous, anonymous, and conformist, for petty ideologues who lack any genuine knowledge and moral authority cannot be otherwise. Who are these people? Where do they come from? Who were their parents? How were they educated? What previous record of character and knowledge have they established? ”

    Could it be that the majority of Americans that watch the “news” believe what they hear on the “news”. I think that any one who is thinking at all, probably is very selective thus not of the majority. I guess my point is if you want to be liked by others (a burning need of insecure people, the majority ) you need to be politically correct and sympathetic to all minorities. You become a hero as defined in post modern terms. To stand up for what is truly right you will not be standing with the majority in America. The people organizing popular “news” are trying for numbers, not moral high ground.

33. 33 Comment by Roland de Chanson on 1 March 2008:

    Obama will be President. The gamblers are banking on it. How can he fail? No Republican will dare bring out any of his numerous negative factors—that would be forbidden “racism.”

    Not just racism. The greatest negative factor is his pernicious dissimulation. Born to America-despising parents, married to a woman with no sense of patriotism, he nevertheless attempts to appear one of the liberal establishement. We will find out too late what his real agenda is.

    In Mohammedanism the concept is known as taqiyya.

34. 34 Comment by Ploni Almoni on 2 March 2008:

    Re Mr. Wilson’s individualist attack on the idea of reparations for blacks: agreed that talk of “healing” etc. is fatuous, but the demand for reparations should be taken seriously by anyone who takes white racial identity seriously. Mr. Wilson himself apparently does not, but the late Sam Francis did and some Chronicles readers do. If a group identity entails pre-voluntary loyalty and obligations among its members, then it also entails the possibility of collective responsibility to other groups. In some cases that means responsibility for actions committed by dead individuals to whom you’re related only by virtue of group membership.

    European-Americans committed a horrible crime against African-Americans. For those who reject Lockean individualism (for want of a better word) and believe in group identity, European-Americans as a group owed (past tense), and perhaps still owe, compensation to African-Americans — again, as a group — for slavery and other crimes. The fact that, today, wrongs are “known only in imagination” does not invalidate the claim. There’s a question whether that debt has been re-paid. Some say it was paid in blood in the Civil War, which had the effect (whatever its cause) of abolishing slavery. There’s plenty of room for argument on points like this, but for those who (unlike Mr. Wilson, apparently) do believe in non-voluntary obligations to their own ethnie or race, the question of black reparations can’t be dismissed so glibly.

35. 35 Comment by woodcutter on 2 March 2008:

    The fact that, today, wrongs are “known only in imagination” does not invalidate the claim….35Ploni Almoni

    Re…A “news” story tells me that reparations for slavery will be a good thing because it will bring about “healing” and “forgiveness.” What can this mean? There is no one alive who qualifies to be healed or forgiven in regard to the institution that ended a century and a half ago. Should money be offered to “heal” wrongs known only in imagination?

    Dr.Wilson is bang on! I am from one of these groups. I am an Acadian , my ancestors were uprooted from there homes, imprisoned and sent to foreign lands. I have no recollection of this event in 1755. Many Acadians have been told that the English owe them something, and are thus convinced that they are some sort of victims. Once this victim mentality is embraced, a target for their personal anger and resentments is created. This is only learned and not remembered. My Acadian brothers and sisters have gone so far with this that they refuse to participate in Sunday Mass if it is in English.
    I have no recollection of the deportation. I have no desire to be compinsated for a past atrocity against my ancestors, I have no desire or need to become a victim on behalf of my ancestors. Acceptance of this would only make me a weeker person.

36. 36 Comment by Edward on 2 March 2008:

    #35 “If a group identity entails pre-voluntary loyalty and obligations among its members, then it also entails the possibility of collective responsibility to other groups. In some cases that means responsibility for actions committed by dead individuals to whom you’re related only by virtue of group membership.”

    Firstly, you would have to prove somehow that people are affected today by crimes committed towards their ancestors. After so many things have happened in this country since slavery ended, including the Civil War, I think it would be near impossible to demonstrate this. Secondly, group identity is not defined along absolute lines. My family and I came to this country in the early 20th century along with millions of other immigrants who bear no group responsibility for slavery. Your logic might work if you were speaking solely of families who owned slaves and their descendants, but in America describing the guilty party as “European-Americans” is too sweeping a generalization.

    “Once this victim mentality is embraced, a target for their personal anger and resentments is created.”

    Amen.

    Secondly, if you are right, this reasoning should work both ways. I live in New York City, which has been destroyed by black people. So much crime and poverty is not only here but in many urban cities in America. I had a friend who, when I was fifteen, was beaten to a bloody pulp by a group of blacks who were specifically looking to target white boys. My mother was viciously mugged 4 times in her life while living in the Bronx and Manhattan. Black people are responsible for most of the crime in this city and country, so if anything “European-Americans” like my family and I are owed something.

37. 37 Comment by Zika on 2 March 2008:

    “American freedom”, ” American dream”, American sainthood and righteousness, American MORALITY AND , as we now know, TOTALITARIANISM, they ALL sound as they have been presented by the ALMIGHTY HIMSELF. The catchy AND deceptive phrases have been concoted by the government in Washington itself some time ago in order to glorify and promote its own agenda and rule over the world without regard to the rule of international laws. They themselves have been effectively clothed in as the norms and desirable behaviour to adhere to , to strive to, so to reach the ultimate in life and living. However, over some period of time, it has been discovered and uncovered, that the above moral preachings to the world BY American Presidents and their puppets, ARE just EMPTY PHRASES AND SELF DELUSIONS that are bound to surface soon or later . Hallelujah!!!

38. 38 Comment by Dan on 2 March 2008:

    The latest election charade sounds more like the death knell for this country than its revival. Democratic policies are nearly irrelevant since the message of both Hillary and Obama can be reduced to “getting even.” Every loser, ugly hag, fruitcake and creep in this country is foaming at the mouth at the chance to get even with his or her betters so long as the burden falls mainly on others. Some of these old women are passing out and wetting themselves at Obama rallies, and even the females present appear overcome with emotion.

    Mobocracy is too elevated a term for what we are about to witness in this country. Unspeakable sexual perversion, baby killing, brainwashing of children, confication of property, censorship of Western culture and arts, and other, lesser refinements of servility like insurmountable personal debt, are now the American way. This is the America Hillary and Obama appeal to, and it is the America of the future. As for the Republicans, McCain is a dangerous, narcissistic madman, who never saw a liberal’s rear end he wouldn’t kiss for personal gain. To paraphrase Jefferson, it is not possible for a true war hero to have lost so much of his manhood.

    Does anyone read this far down on the comments? In any case, I have not wasted a single minute of my time on the debates, most certainly will not vote for any presidential candidate, and feel that life is worth living no matter how degenerate my country has become. Americans are a “good people?” I believe the average American is a morally depraved coward willing to mortgage his children’s and grand children’s future in return for “having fun.” It’s ironic, too, that those least able to handle hardship are the ones demanding more repression at every turn. Just wait until it comes knocking down their own front door in the name of social justice.

39. 39 Comment by Edward on 2 March 2008:

    “I believe the average American is a morally depraved coward willing to mortgage his children’s and grand children’s future in return for “having fun.” ”

    Amen. As Pope John Paul II said, “Democracy, cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality …. Its `moral’ value … depends on conformity to the moral law.”

40. 40 Comment by robert reavis on 2 March 2008:

    In the U.S. today the ruling elite are without any sense of right and wrong, having only a self-serving agenda, cynical manipulative techniques, and a shoddy and shallow worldview.

    It would help both them and our country if after office they would go and volunteer to serve with American troops in some of these wars they initiated in defense of “vital American interests.”. Imagine the wisdom Bill Clinton and Mrs. Albright could obtain by living along side and serving with troops in Kosovo and Serbia–just for a year or three after office. Or imagine the real support the troops could see and receive if Mr. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz were serving right along side them in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if they just road along side the soldiers, never dismounting the helicopter but just showing their support for a volunteer enlistment of say two years ? Immediately after leaving office next January. Imagine the intel they could provide, the hardships they could share with their fellow Americans and the wisdom they might obtain.

41. 41 Comment by Ploni Almoni on 3 March 2008:

    More on black reparations.

    woodcutter is right that, especially in today’s climate, the idea of collective responsibility can be taken way too far. That doesn’t invalidate the principle, though.

    Edward is right that African-Americans today may be better off as a result of slavery. However, that misses the point of *group* responsibility. If you’re talking only about *individuals* alive today, then obviously no one owes anyone for something he didn’t do. Does the African-American situation today compensate for the suffering they endured as a group during slavery? Zora Neale Hurston, who of course was born after the end of slavery, put it beautifully: “Slavery is the price I paid for civilization.” Note the first person singular.

    The idea of *group* responsibility is also missed with the phrase “solely of families who owned slaves and their descendants”. I’m not talking about family responsibility, though I think that’s valid in principle too. Most of us are members of an ethnie called “European-Americans”. By identifying with that ethnie, we identify with its history (but see below). To say that “my ancestors weren’t even here during slavery” is not an argument, it’s just a re-statement of the individualist position.

    The argument that the high disparity of black crime against whites balances things out is also wrong, because this is generally *individual* crime, even when race is part of the motivation. Racial slavery and Jim Crow were crimes committed by European-Americans against African-Americans as *groups*.

    Finally, note that ethnic identity is crucial here. Group responsibility presupposes group identity. If European-Americans don’t identify *as* European-Americans–with the group interests, history, etc.–then as Edward suggests there’s nothing to connect us to a bunch of dead white people, and the European-American ethnie can plead that it now owes nothing, on the grounds that it no longer exists. Conversely, someone claiming compensation from whites must acknowledge the”right” of whites to identify as whites, to pursue white group interests, etc. Group responsiblity presupposes group identity.

42. 42 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 3 March 2008:

    If it be true that 13% of the people are terrorizing 87%, then I respectfully submit that there must be something seriuously wrong with the 87% (as the confusion of the above discussion would seem to indicate). Are the 87% stupid?, cowardly?, suffering from some strange delusions about the nature of the world?, unable to choose good leaders?, incapable of learning anything from history?. unworthy to govern themselves? Problem can’t begin to be solved until you admit that the problem is not them, it is us.

43. 43 Comment by Allen Wilson on 3 March 2008:

    Look at it this way. If they tax whites to give money to blacks, or otherwise confiscate – steal – the hard earned wealth of poor and middle class whites, and try to justify this with a guilt trip propaganda campaign, it could turn out to be a good thing. Whites will know they are being robbed under false pretenses, and if this includes whites whose ancestors came over after the war, then so much the better.

    It could be a nail in the coffin of multiculturalism and leftist traitor hegemony over society. It could be the beginning of the end of race baiting politics as we have known it for sixty plus years.

44. 44 Comment by Prozium on 3 March 2008:

    If it be true that 13% of the people are terrorizing 87%, then I respectfully submit that there must be something seriuously wrong with the 87% (as the confusion of the above discussion would seem to indicate). Are the 87% stupid?, cowardly?, suffering from some strange delusions about the nature of the world?, unable to choose good leaders?, incapable of learning anything from history?. unworthy to govern themselves? Problem can’t begin to be solved until you admit that the problem is not them, it is us.

    In practice, democracy doesn’t work like it is supposed to. The typical American is driven less by rational calculation of self-interest than he is by the slogans, spin, and manufactured disinformation that he picks up from the media. Power is denominated less in votes at the ballot box than it is in the ability to structure mass opinion through propaganda and artfully manipulate status perceptions. This is why the sites of cultural articulation – the universities, public schools, churches, the news and entertainment media – and the monied interests that finance and control them are central to understanding the prevailing power structure in the United States, as opposed to celebrated phantoms like “will of the people” which in any case is routinely engineered through discourse poisoning.

    The major design flaw of liberal capitalist democracy and its ideology of Freedom-Equality-Tolerance is universalism; the embrace of which erodes the traditional in-group vs. out-group distinction, and leaves the native population vulnerable to internal subversion and misdirection by race parasites. Unfortunately, the conservative appeal to tradition is not a remedy to this situation, as American traditions like Protestant Christianity and republicanism suffer from multiple internal flaws which are easily exploited by crafty, intelligent ethnic opportunists (see the Bush administration); a phenomenon that paleos should well understand by now, seeing as how they have been fulminating about the hijacking of the conservative movement itself for about twenty years now.

    “White Nationalism,” or more broadly “racialism” in its various guises, shows promise because it takes this essential observation as its starting point. Interest is clearly defined (and easily calculated) as biological reproductive success, influence, and power instead of appeal to hoary romanticisms (various) or abstract principles which are emptily asserted to be “natural.” This is a solid foundation which a civilization can be erected upon. The individual who embraces this worldview (such as the founding American settlers) will usually reason out the correct cultural conclusions, as opposed to conservatives who never seem to make it past second base, mumbling about symptoms instead of root causes.

45. 45 Pingback by Diagnosing the Problem | Odessa Syndicate on 3 March 2008:

    [...] exchange with Clyde Wilson at Chronicles. If it be true that 13% of the people are terrorizing 87%, then I [...]

46. 46 Comment by Simon Newman on 3 March 2008:

    “In the U.S. today the ruling elite are without any sense of right and wrong”

    If the US ruling elite are anything like the ruling elite here in the UK they have a pretty strong sense of right and wrong; it just differs from the sense the rest of us has. Obama, Clinton and McCain all have a pretty similar and pretty clear sense of what’s right and wrong to them.

47. 47 Comment by Simon Newman on 3 March 2008:

    “Obama will be President. The gamblers are banking on it. How can he fail? No Republican will dare bring out any of his numerous negative factors—that would be forbidden “racism.” ”

    Racism, however defined, is of course the ruling elite’s greatest Wrong of all.

48. 48 Comment by robert m. peters on 3 March 2008:

    Dr. Wilson,

    Your words:

    “Presidential candidates. Who among them has pietas and gravitas? Who has any true sense of the law and the Constitution? Who has thought about the proper ends of man and society? Who has more than a superficial relationship to the two millennia of Western culture?” ….

    ” In the U.S. today the ruling elite are without any sense of right and wrong, having only a self-serving agenda, cynical manipulative techniques, and a shoddy and shallow worldview.” ….

    “American public affairs are present-centered (an adolescent characteristic). Nobody remembers any past record of a politician.”

    On the last leg of a journey home from an excellent conference in climes beyond the frontiers of our state, my friend and I found ourselves back in Louisiana listening to a discussion about “ethics” reform in Louisiana. Three quotes, cited supra, from your article are very relevant to this debate.

    The host and his guest were rightly outraged at the farce call “ethics reform” which is going to Governor Jindal in the form of a bill to be signed into law.

    It was rightly pointed out that Governor Jindal serves two masters: one with his rhetoric and the other with his soul; the former is the State of Louisiana to which he was elected Governor; and the latter the Republican Party through which he aspires to be, some day, President. The “ethics reform” package was a prearranged deal between the Office of the Governor and certain members of the legislature on the one hand and “ethics rating institutions” on the other. The legislation was tailored to meet the standards and specifications of the aforementioned entities to improve Louisiana’s ability to getting better bonding for borrowing money and for enticing industry into the state. Thus, the “worthy” goals were not ethics but taxing and financing. In addition, the Governor and the legislature now has campaign talking points: we cooperated and through that cooperation we got meaningful ethics reform. One can already hear Mr. Jindal in 1212 or 1216, as he runs for President, citing his ability to work in a bipartisan way with the Louisiana legislature and his ability to get “meaningful” ethics reform.

    The radio host and his guest took the discussion even further; they showed that despite the “reform” which meets all of the standards of the rating agencies there is no meaningful enforcement, the financing of the existing enforcement agency are not enough for it to do its work and the agency itself, the ethics commission, has been politicized in that it is no longer a group independently installed and bipartisan but is now appointed by the Governor himself.

    The radio host and his guest rightly pointed out, to link this to your quotes cited supra, that the current ethics reform in Louisiana have naught to do with right and wrong and that they are, therefore, all eyewash; however, even the host and his guest fail to recognize a deeper truth: when an electorate lacks the discernment or the will to place ethical men in office, when the prevailing party system undercuts ethical behavior and when the fiscal system of a polity tempts even the most ethical of men, the talk of and the attempt to implement “meaningful” enforcement and a “politically-neutral” (impossible) ethics committee themselves constitute a farce!

49. 49 Comment by Edward on 3 March 2008:

    “The argument that the high disparity of black crime against whites balances things out is also wrong, because this is generally *individual* crime, even when race is part of the motivation. Racial slavery and Jim Crow were crimes committed by European-Americans against African-Americans as *groups*.”

    Whether a group commits atrocities explicitly as a group is irrelevant. Simply being a member of the group entails responsibility by the entire group. If I am from a tribe and murder a man from another tribe, it matters little whether I murder ‘in the name of my tribe’; who I am determines what group is held responsible.

    “The idea of *group* responsibility is also missed with the phrase “solely of families who owned slaves and their descendants”. I’m not talking about family responsibility, though I think that’s valid in principle too. Most of us are members of an ethnie called “European-Americans”. By identifying with that ethnie, we identify with its history (but see below). To say that “my ancestors weren’t even here during slavery” is not an argument, it’s just a re-statement of the individualist position.”

    Group identity springs from a shared culture and tradition. It is incorrect to use the term ‘European-American’ because people define the their groups in different ways. Europeans were warring with each other for centuries using group identifications much more specific than ‘Europeans.’ It was Frenchmen and Austrians or Russians and English. To say that my ancestors were not here is not to restate the individualist position, quite the contrary, it is an admission that I would assume responsibility for my kin’s actions. I am a New Yorker, so does that mean that I owe in proportion to what other New Yorkers did? If so then I hope it is considerably less than what a Southerner would owe.

50. 50 Comment by Allen Wilson on 3 March 2008:

    Why does no one bring up the fact that the Southern states were unjustly forced to pay off the Yankee war debt? That amounted to a hundred years of taxes stolen from poor whites barely getting by after the criminal invasion and destruction. This is a real debt owed to Southerners by the fedrral government. Why dont we Southerners just hand a bill to the federal government? ‘Alright, you want to talk reparations? Here’s what YOU owe US!’

51. 51 Comment by Bill Temple on 3 March 2008:

    “If it be true that 13% of the people are terrorizing 87%, then I respectfully submit that there must be something seriuously wrong with the 87% (as the confusion of the above discussion would seem to indicate). Are the 87% stupid?, cowardly?, suffering from some strange delusions about the nature of the world?, unable to choose good leaders?, incapable of learning anything from history?. unworthy to govern themselves? Problem can’t begin to be solved until you admit that the problem is not them, it is us.” -Clyde Wilson

    What you say is true and actual. It’s why we all on the old SF site deconstructed xianity to see if it was too good a religion in terms of putting folks on too much of a pink cloud. We decided well, yes but that had been needed in the past to counterbalance the more rigorous realities of mother Nature for the general population; and also that getting rid of xianity or throwing the baby out with the bathwater was suicide for the civilization, which would be worse.

    Although the 13% in their stupidity and greed if it ups profits for TODAY would chuck out the baby and is why they push i.e. the putsch in that jacobian direction is incessant.

    And always in the talking points because ‘it’s what the people want’… yaddah, except when they want out of iraq… yaddah. … Hamilton led to Lincoln led to the social security number since it underwrites banks. … It’s ALL about the fed tax pool… priming the pump popping out billions etc. getting theirs and/or getting one’s own. The country now is like an amoeba too big.

    It’s larger than the European Union’s market for example. Our leaders have NO idea what ‘trade’ even means anymore it’s so much about the fed tax pool every year. … I watched a show on t.v. the other day where the ‘pundits’ thought it was proof “free” trade and globalism were a marvel good for “America” because a kentucky fried chicken store was opening up every week in China… Except precisely THAT is not trade. All the pundits thought it was ‘trade’ and that such a phenomenon as that made their point. … wow. … In reality they’re not different than either Obama or Greenspan. McCain says he ‘knows nothing’ [putting one in mind of the character Sergeant Shultz on that old t.v. program Stalag 13] … McCain admitting he knows nothing about the economy (he’s only a Senator)… so he’s reading Greenspan’s book. Gives new meaning to the admonition ‘duck and cover.’ Probably also a more accurate title for the book.

    Back to the amoeba that’s too big in [my] paragraph 4 above… The first one celled organism when it became too big I suppose billions of years ago it divided and became two healthier amoebas. That was attempted via our Civil War.

    What’s next? ……….. Duck & cover?

    Is that a minute rice – isn’t it-?- “duck and cover a San Francisco treat…” !?! Are they opening now too in China? Can we go on t.v. now or we’re not the 13%?! Duck & cover… everybody’s got the beat… enjoy.
    ____

52. 52 Comment by Ploni Almoni on 4 March 2008:

    #50: Edward, describing group responsibility, says: “Simply being a member of the group entails responsibility by the entire group.”

    That’s one concept of group responsibiilty but it’s not the one I’m talking about. It can work at the clan level but would be a disaster at the scale of a race. I mean more or less what Alasdair MacIntyre means by it, which is closer to your “shared culture and tradition” (MacIntyre would emphasize “narrative”). In _After Virtue_, by the way, he uses the case of “American” (sic–not “white American”) responsibility for slavery explicitly, attacking the attitude of “I never owned any slaves” as an example of the “modern individualism” against which his book is an argument. Seems to me that some writers at this site (e.g., Thomas Fleming) are fairly compatible with MacIntyre in general, while others (e.g., Mr. Wilson) are not.

    On “European-American”, whatever their histories in Europe, Americans of Irish, English, Jewish, Italian, etc. ancestry have pretty much assimilated into a group called “white”, which is perceived as a group by all other groups if not by itself (and as I said, the “not by itself” is crucial to my way of looking at this). Equally important, this group called “European-American” has been grafted onto the olive tree of “English (or British)”, the ethnie which constituted America until about a century ago and which both established and abolished racial slavery.

    On your question whether you’d “owe” in proportion to your fellow New Yorkers, the contingent answer is No. The group “New Yorkers” was not salient in the history of American slavery. Even so, I think that present-day southerners are responsible for slavery only as whites, not as southerners, for more than one reason. But that’s getting farther off subject. My rather modest claim was that *if* you reject modern individualism and identify with the group “European-American”, then you can’t glibly dismiss the idea that your group owes compensation for slavery, or for the conquest of the Indians either, for that matter.

53. 53 Comment by Ploni Almoni on 4 March 2008:

    #43: “If it be true that 13% of the people are terrorizing 87%, then I respectfully submit that there must be something seriuously wrong with the 87% (as the confusion of the above discussion would seem to indicate).”

    Maybe I can confuse this one too, then. The problem is that most of those 87% are *not* terrorized or otherwise inconvenienced, and therefore are quite willing to sell out those few unfortunate percentage points who are.

54. 54 Comment by woodcutter on 4 March 2008:

    Back to the amoeba that’s too big in [my] paragraph 4 above… The first one celled organism when it became too big I suppose billions of years ago it divided and became two healthier amoebas. That was attempted via our Civil War….52 Bill Temple

    Your analogy is all mixed up.. the healthy multi celled amoeba was the republic before the civil war. The civil war was an attempt to to turn it into the one celled creature. Reverse evolution?

55. 55 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 4 March 2008:

    It is universally accepted, even by people who should know better, but not proved, that antebellum Southern slavery was a “crime” rather than a benefit.

56. 56 Comment by Edward on 4 March 2008:

    Does it count for anything that slavery was abolished by “European-Americans?”

    I greatly admire MacIntyre and Fleming for all of their ideas and agree with them whole-heartedly about liberalism in general. If I dismissed reparations glibly I would not challenge you at all. The reason I am, though, is to say that I reject ‘modern individualism’ but still see reparations as a great evil on several other grounds, including how we define what exactly group identity entails. It seems we agree more than each of us thinks. However, I am not going to discuss right now the idea of reparations and why it would be a disaster.

57. 57 Comment by Ploni Almoni on 4 March 2008:

    #57: I think it counts a lot that slavery was abolished by whites, and it especially counts that it was abolished at an enormous cost in blood. I tend to see that as having canceled the debt.

    Whatever their merits or lack thereof in principle, I agree that in practice, in the current political climate, reparations would be a disaster. I wasn’t arguing for reparations, but rather against one type of objection to them, the individualist objection implied by Mr. Wilson. I agree that we seem to agree.

58. 58 Comment by Ploni Almoni on 4 March 2008:

    Clyde Wilson (#56): “It is universally accepted, even by people who should know better, but not proved, that antebellum Southern slavery was a “crime” rather than a benefit.”

    Yeah, I was the one who called it a horrible crime–obviously speaking morally rather than juridically. Just out of curiosity, do the “people who should know better” include Eugene Genovese?

    Except for calculations which measure benefit by the amount of food in one’s belly–which I think we can all reject out of hand–I’ve never seen a calculation that those African-American slaves who survived the journey (it’s sufficient for my argument to focus on the first generation) were better off as slaves than they were back in Africa. That may be just a sign of my own ignorance. I don’t pretend to know anything about the history, and I’d never presume to argue the historical facts with Professor Clyde Wilson.

    Let’s assume blacks transported from Africa were better off as slaves by some accepted measurement, whatever that would be. Kidnapping a person (to use an individual analogy), taking him far from his home, and holding him for the rest of his life, even for his own good, is a moral crime. Of course there were arguments that it is not immoral when committed in the context of racial slavery, but I doubt if anyone here would accept those arguments. Presumably the slaves would have liked to go home, at least at first, even though they’d been benefitted. If American slavery was a net benefit to the first generation of slaves themselves, it was nevertheless a horrible crime as well. The two are not contradictory.

59. 59 Comment by Allen Wilson on 4 March 2008:

    Pion Almoni, with all due respect, the slaves weren’t kidnapped. They were already slaves and were sold by their own people to the European and Yankee slavers. As for it being ‘racial’, the chief factor in slavery was economic, not racial. They weren’t brought over here because of their race, but because they were an economic asset. They were brought from Africa and not elsewhere beacuse that was where slaves were easily and cheaply obtained.

    There was also white slavery in the form of illegal ‘indentures’. This illegal form of slavery went on under the cover of the legal indenture system, and did involve kidnapping, along with forged indenture papers, etc.

60. 60 Comment by robert m. peters on 4 March 2008:

    Dr. Wilson,

    Your words:

    “It is universally accepted, even by people who should know better, but not proved, that antebellum Southern slavery was a “crime” rather than a benefit.”

    I note that a crime is an act malum in se under common law or an act that is malum prohibitum under a statute legislated, tending toward positive law. Slavery was certainly not a crime in the antebellum South.

    As to sin, to the extent that it might apply – with the ultimate repose of an position thereon lying in St. Paul’s letter to Philemon, one sins against God and save for the blood of the Christ answers to Him for that affront; for as David so eloquently tells us it is against God and against Him alone that one sins. One does not sin against the emotional sentiments of a confused age which claims that it – said age – can be held to no standard while it – said age – deigns in arrogance and hubris to hold other ages accountable for notions of “sin” which it has created out of whole cloth, said age having replaced God with itself and its own whimsical notions.

    Since the servitude of most Africans who were slaves in the antebellum South began in Africa itself, either under their own kin or, if not kin, then under those of their own race, then the practical question of “benefit,” assuming that the condition was in fact given, would be was servitude in that condition better or worse in their native Africa or the antebellum South. In which circumstance was one likely to be better treated or to live longer.? In which circumstance were their customs of liberty and traditions in play through which one or one’s progeny more likely become free and come to participate in a stable society?

    As to reparations, the alleged moral facade reeks of the scent of money for attorneys, for the shakedown artists and for, in much more paultry sums, the allegedly aggrieved. For the politicians, it means power by having placated with someone else’s money their constituency and interest groups. For the moralizing chattering class reparations would bring on a sense of moral action, having used the power of the state to take the wealth of the historically innocent to placate the wants of the allegedly aggrieved class.

    It seems that any ploy for the transfer of wealth using the power of the general government is considered and executed: from the Tariff of Abomination to the current ruse.

61. 61 Comment by MAP on 4 March 2008:

    It is curious that with all the abstract rights and wrongs being thrown around, plundering (stealing from) the working class for money to buy the votes of the non-working class is obviously not considered a wrong. Hmm…?

62. 62 Comment by Bill Temple on 4 March 2008:

    “Your analogy is all mixed up.. the healthy multi celled amoeba was the republic before the civil war. The civil war was an attempt to to turn it into the one celled creature. Reverse evolution?” -woodcutter

    I don’t ‘deserve’ to post here because I usually just stumble in and post after reading a couple or few words of something which triggers me. So I don’t usually give others at the site (although they no doubt deserve it) the respect of having read them before I throw a wrench in.

    However I usually do so since it feels like a good idea. Feelings aren’t always facts. But I do it on a hunch, I should…it couldn’t hurt?

    However for the first time in Western Civilization since Christianity Lincoln attacked civilian populations (and even his own) as a strategy for waging war. Europeans were astonished.

    An amoeba by definition is a one-celled organism or creature. The South rebelled or tried to split. If it had it would have been, given my analogy above, another unified or one-celled creature, making two instead of one. It is not possible to have a multi-celled amoeba.

    However I take your point. The South only rebelled because the healthier multi-celled paramecium that the country was back then was being threatened with DEVOLUTION (like say one of us, probably me, suddenly growing a tail) and Forced-so I guess it would be reverse-evolutionary engineering into being a one-celled organism yet again such as an AMOEBA. Perhaps his name ought to have been Amoeba Lincoln?

    Let’s call it then between an often incoherent myself and woodcutter at least in this case a draw. The two duelists probably on purpose prudently missed each other… ships passing in the night.

    When in the future reading my posts if you do… remember their THEME – ’stop making sense.’? ?

    Let Shakespeare make sense:

    To leave poor me you have the strength of laws
    For why to love [you/universal] I can allege no cause
    But that your disbelief now becomes my fee
    Mine ransoms yours and yours [must] ransoms me…

    “Huh?” … no, it’s Shakespudder – or rather – ‘Shakespeare approximately’

    is it me or is it getting weird ? or BOTH. prudent to woodcut… keep it simple.
    ___________

63. 63 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 4 March 2008:

    If you late comers think we Southerners alone should pay for slavery, then you owe us for pioneering a wilderness and setting up a free society for you to immigrate to. You can’t claim the benefits of the founders of America without incurring their debts also.

64. 64 Comment by Allan on 4 March 2008:

    Since I had a Native American ancestor that was enslaved by another tribe and sold to one of my European American ancestors and the only ancestor I can find that owned African slaves was Cherokee can I just write myself a big fat check and forget about this non-sense?

65. 65 Comment by Ronduck on 4 March 2008:

    If we pay reparations now they will want more in the future. The only way to end it now if we pay them reparations is to send them back to Africa.

66. 66 Comment by Ploni Almoni on 5 March 2008:

    #60: Good points. I don’t know the history of American slavery so I’m just reasoning (maybe incorrectly) from common sense. I was aware that slaves were bought from African slaveholders. However, common sense tells me that such a high demand in the US would affect the supply in Africa. That is, more slaves would be captured (by Africans) because of the overseas trade. It’s not as if there were a predetermined number of slaves, and the choice was whether they’d be enslaved in Africa or America. But if there is empirical evidence that demand didn’t affect supply, I think it would be interesting.

    The racial aspect of slavery is important from the point of view of group responsibility–again, using that concept to mean more or less what Alasdair MacIntyre means by it. “Individual” slavery might be just as bad, but racial slavery was a moral crime committed against African-Americans as a *group*.

    #64: Mr. Wilson’s comment is puzzling because as far as I can tell, the only reference to specifically Southern responsibility was by me, when I wrote [emphasis added], ” I think that present-day southerners are responsible for slavery only as whites, NOT AS SOUTHERNERS”. I meant that it’s European-Americans in general, not Southerners, who should bear responsibility.

67. 67 Comment by robert m. peters on 5 March 2008:

    Ploni Almoni @

    Your words:

    “…but racial slavery was a moral crime committed against African-Americans as a *group*.”

    What is “racial slavery” and what is a “moral crime”? How does a “group,” i.e. all members thereof, become guilty; and how does a “group,” i.e. all members thereof, become victims?

68. 68 Comment by Allen Wilson on 5 March 2008:

    Pioni Almoni: The issue of whether demand for slaves increased the supply in Africa is obviously complicated and perhaps unresolvable. However, didn’t the Spaniards take a whole lot more slaves to their colonies than were taken to America? Also, I believe that the increase of slaves in America was, early on, due more to them multiplying here, rather than continued importation. The Spanish and Portuguese were involved in it before the Dutch, Brits and Yankees, and before that, the Arabs, yet we hear nothing of demand for reparations in Europe, Latin America or the Muslim world, nor do we hear demands for reparations to be paid by African descendants of those who sold their fellow Africans or even kinsmen to an alien race. Talk about race treason!

    Consider that we may be entering dangerous ground if we talk about collective guilt based on ethnicity or race, because to admit that there is collective guilt for enslaving other ethnicities automatically suggests that there is also such a thing as real race treason in a moral sense. We cant have our cake and eat it too. Why should Africans who sold their own to an alien race not be labelled as race traitors?

    Well, we could start with the supposition that such concepts as moral collective guilt and race treason didn’t exist back then and we are imposing modern ideological terms on an earlier time. Which is what we might be doing, though I’m not sure in this case because I dont know that much about the whole thing.

    Also, what about the claim of some extremist Jews that all Americans of German descent – apparently including those only partly of German descent – bear collective guilt for the holocaust, even though all their german ancestors may have come over here priot to 1800, and who had relatives who fought the Nazis, perhaps even helped liberate concentration camps? Presumably, this responsibility would also extend to anyone even partly of descent from the German’s allies as well, namely the Japanese, Italians, Romanians, Croats, Slovaks, Hungarians, etc. Indeed, beyond this, to all white Europeans and peoples of European descent in the world, just because they are related to the Germans. Some have actually said this, and it’s insane.

    Corruption of blood is illegal before the law as well as immoral. You cannot hold someone responsible for a crime or debt which he himself did not incur or was not involved in, just because he had a relative who did incur such debt or was involved in such crime. To do so is legally a crime against the person to whom you do this, and is punishable to the full extent of the law.

    That’s also assuming that slavery, as it existed in America at the time, was in fact a crime, which it was not, or even immoral, which it was not according to the Bible.

69. 69 Comment by robert m. peters on 5 March 2008:

    Mr. Allen @ 69

    You make some excellent points.

70. 70 Comment by woodcutter on 5 March 2008:

    67Ploni Almoni…..Good points. I don’t know the history of American slavery so I’m just reasoning (maybe incorrectly) from common sense.

    Common sense would tell me that by participating in the life of a certain day or age does not make me responsible to future laws. Example……70 years from now it is illegal to burn fossil fuels in cars because it has been named the cause of climate change that has been the cause of millions of deaths world wide. My great grandson is whisked of to jail because I burned 10 gallons of gasoline weekly which is now a crime against society and the world. Or he is required to pay a fine for every year I drove a car……I would say that I firstly am not guilty because this is not a crime today ( no matter how much I demanded and how much was supplied ) and common sense says my great grandson should not be responsible as he is not even born yet and certainly was no part of a non-crime.

71. 71 Comment by Ploni Almoni on 6 March 2008:

    I’ll try to wrap things up here. I hadn’t intended to get so much into this. Lots of good questions/criticisms to which I’ll reply in this overly long post (sorry), hopefully my final post on this topic.

    My term “moral crime” was both vague and polemic, a cheap shot really. I meant a very immoral (not necessarily illegal) act, and I stand by that description of American slavery. (Note that an act may be immoral even if it benefits the “victim”, which I’m still not convinced slavery did.) By “racial slavery”, I meant enslavement of members of some race which is institutionalized and justified at least partly on racial grounds. This includes American slavery. I don’t know whether or not it includes African slavery, taking “race” in the old sense to refer sometimes to nation or tribe.

    On group responsibility, I’m certainly not suggesting that all members of a group are victims or persecutors. That’s a form of individual responsibility! I’ve already referred to Alasdair MacIntyre, because I agree with his concepts if not his philosophy. A simpler example might be the Bible, where entiire nations are presented as “personal” characters in a historical drama. This concept seems especially hard for contemporary Western-educated, intellectual people to grasp. Ask an uneducated African-American whether the “White Man” still owes the “Black Man” for slavery, and he’ll probably understand what you mean–or rather, what I mean. The concepts of group identity and group responsibility certainly existed at the time of slavery. Our own age is the exception, not theirs.

    Someone said that this discussion is abstract, and I guess it is, but I don’t think it’s any more abstract than the concept of an autonomous individual self morally unfettered by–abstracted from–the historical situation into which he was born. In other words, the standard enlightened concept of the moral agent.

    Granted the concept of group responsibility is dangerous, but it’s not obvious that it’s more dangerous than modern individualism. I identify strongly as white, much more strongly than do most other whites, and I support white group interests without apology. As I said above, group responsibility presupposes group identity.

    On the argument that moral condemnation of slaveholders is ex post facto,
    slavery was considered immoral by many at the time, including “conservatives” like Burke and Samuel Johnson. My impression is that Johnson’s anti-Americanism was largely a matter of his hatred of slavery. (Remember his most famous remark on that topic, “”How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” ) In any case, we make moral judgments based on our own morality; we can condemn acts while keeping in mind their context, including the fact that the perpetrators may have been acting morally as they saw it and may not have been “bad people”.

    Labeling African slave-merchants as race traitors may be anachronistic. I doubt that Africans identified as “blacks”, as opposed to members of some tribe or village. In any case, I think I made it clear that collective responsibility is not determined by biological ancestry.

    For Germans, group responsibility for the Shoah is the same idea as white responsibility for slavery.

    The reference to “corruption of blood” indicates that I’ve completely failed to make myself clear. No individual white today bears any guilt or responsibility whatsoever for slavery, nor any German born after 1945 for the Shoah. Similarly, no individual white can claim credit for abolishiing slavery, which whites as a group can claim.

    To understand what I mean, try to think of these groups–whites and blacks in America, the German Volk, the Jews–as persons acting in a story. A rough analogy, but useful. Re-reading the Old Testament might make that easier to imagine. (Maybe you could skip over the embarrassing bits about genocide and smashing babies against rocks; I already admitted this stuff is dangerous.) If you object that this way of looking at things is too abstract or metaphorical, I reply that it’s the individual, ahistorical moral self which is the more egregious abstraction.

72. 72 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 6 March 2008:

    Phoni, your likening of the established domestic family servitude of antebellum America to a German statist extermination project is repulsive in the highest degree and indicates that you are as deluded by abstractions as every leftist and destructive to this or any other discussion on the subject.

73. 73 Comment by Frank on 6 March 2008:

    Upon what basis is slavery immoral? I don’t wish for slavery, but morality isn’t one of the reasons.

74. 74 Comment by robert m. peters on 6 March 2008:

    Ploni Almoni @ 72

    Some thoughts on your post.

    This issue is neither a gift nor a tuna at the fish market “to be wrapped up.”

    “Slavery is a very immoral act.” A slave – like children, women, apprentices, soldiiers and prisoners – was subordinate to a person or persons in 19th century antebellum America. Today, children, soldiers and prisoners are still subordinant to a person or persons. In recent days, an court in California has made those parents who home school and their childrend subordinate to the state and has essentially decreed, if the judgment holds, that they are criminals if they do not subjugate themselves to the public school authorities. For about eight hours a day, students are subordinate to teachers. Now, I will cede that when one is in a subordinate condition, one is more likely to be maltreated than when not. One always hopes that one’s master, one’s parent, one’s warden, one’s officer, one’s husband or one’s boss is a moral person. Also, a condition of subordination is not an act. Certain acts, moral or immoral, may take place within that condition.

    There is absolutely nothing inherently immoral about making decisions based on the race, gender, age or social standing of another. The catagory of “hate crime” can be used to demonstrate. If one kills me because I am white, the immorally thereof which can the catagorized as a crime and therefore punished lies in the killing, i.e. murder, the act of denying me my life and not in the having catagorized me. That is why the catagory of “hate crime” is an absurdity. I am sure you known that American Africans held fellow Africans as slaves in America – an in large numbers, deconstructing the myth of their apologists that they motive was to emancipate their relatives. They were hardly practicing “racial slavery.” Or was their “slavery” less bad because it was not “racial”? Was the white master who owned forty slaves more evil than the black master, just down the bayou, who owned sixty slaves?

    Your words:

    “I reply that it’s the individual, ahistorical moral self which is the more egregious abstraction.”

    Are you saying that individuals are not morally responsibible as individuals?

75. 75 Comment by Allen Wilson on 7 March 2008:

    If individual whites today cannot be blamed for slavery, then neither can whites as a group. There are no whites alive today who were involved in it, therefore, all whites today are innocent of it; it follows that whites as a group are totally innocent of slavery.

    Even if slavery were a ‘crime’ in any sense of the word, no one alive today is responsible for it, therefore they are innocent of it. They cannot be blamed or justly forced to pay reparations. This is corruption of blood for a crime that never existed, is not in itself immoral, and which was also practiced by blacks both in Africa and in America.

76. 76 Comment by David Collins on 7 March 2008:

    You make sense to me, Ploni Almoni.

    Frank, slavery is immoral because Holy Mother Church says so. For me, anyway, that settles it.

    Dr. Wilson, surely Ploni didn’t mean antebellum slavery was as evil as the German state executing millions. Nonetheless, it was evil. If that makes me a deluded leftist, so be it. The only good result of the War for Southern Independence was the abolition of slavery.

    Mr. Peters, possibly Ploni agrees that individuals are morally responsible as individuals. I think the key word is “ahistorical” in his (her?) phrase “individual, ahistorical self”. As I understand it, he means we aren’t merely individuals with no ties to larger groups. Consequently, we reap the blessings and the curses of group membership. It is precisely because of that there “is absolutely nothing inherently immoral about making decisions based on the race, gender, age or social standing of another.”

77. 77 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 7 March 2008:

    Mr. Collins, where do you get your history? The RC Church never condemned the domestic servitude of the Old South, unlike the Northern branches of most Protestant denominations and in fact did forcefully condemn abolitionism. Bad masters might be condemned but not domestic servitude itself—which was not condemned by the Church or Scripture. The Church was well aware that the South was the most Catholic-tolerant part of the U.S. while the Yankees were promoting conspiracy theories and mobs burned convents in Boston and Philadelphia with the collusion of local authorities. Pio Nino expressed sympathy for the Confederacy and proclaimed against Yankee recruiting in Ireland and Catholic Germany. The notion that the Church has been always in the forefront of antislavery is purely imaginary. It comes about because post Civil War Catholic immigrants were eager to fit in with their self-righteous Yankee neighbours.

78. 78 Comment by David Collins on 8 March 2008:

    Yes, Mr. Wilson, I understood that the Church never condemned slavery until the late nineteenth century (1893, I think). The important thing is that now that it has been condemned, for over a century, we can say that slavery was in fact evil. Had I lived before 1893, I wouldn’t be saying that.

    Furthermore, I don’t think Pope Leo XIII condemned it just so Catholic immigrants to the US could fit in with self-righteous Yankees.

79. 79 Comment by woodcutter on 8 March 2008:

    we can say that slavery was in fact evil. Had I lived before 1893, I wouldn’t be saying that…..David Collins

    Listen to what you are saying “we can say that slavery was in fact evil” …… It WAS NOT crime, it WAS NOT morally wrong… we there fore cannot say it was anything but what it was. We may say it was viewed this way or that by certain peoples at the time but but we must say the truth. If it was evil we need to say in who’s eyes it was seen this way at the time.

    If we use your way of thinking based on what we view as evil , we will need to condemn every society that ever existed and every society that is not ours today. The reality that no one around us or before us has ever perceived evil in the way our post-modern secularists society does. Every man who ever spanked a child would be condemned to hell and jail based on some present day laws and your way of thinking.

80. 80 Comment by James on 8 March 2008:

    Woodcutter, can you really not say that spanking children is a practice on which people and societies can disagree, while slavery is morally wrong?

    Of course societies differ in their views of morality. In eras where slavery was economically beneficial, it was always rationalized. But societies which have no economic use for slavery have never condoned the practice, which is probably a clue that slave societies justify their behavior for selfish reasons, rather than deriving it from moral principles.

    Your point about limiting how we judge other societies strikes me as valid. Surely we should not judge people’s behavior as criminal, simply because future laws would have made their conduct illegal.

    Can we not, however, still say that their behavior was wrong? That they treated their fellow human beings in terrible ways, for their own selfish interests? That they either couldn’t see, or else ignored, how wrong that was?

81. 81 Comment by woodcutter on 8 March 2008:

    Can we not, however, still say that their behavior was wrong? That they treated their fellow human beings in terrible ways, for their own selfish interests? That they either couldn’t see, or else ignored, how wrong that was?

    How about this…… can we not, however, still say that their behavior was different than ours, if it were to be the present day it may be considered morally wrong by some.

    You see, I hesitate to condemn peoples actions as wrong in the past. The way we were in the past required that we live in the moment. Just as we do today. There is no doubt in my mind that there will be things that we practice and do today that will be seen as morally wrong in 100 years (rightly or wrongly).

82. 82 Comment by Frank on 8 March 2008:

    Capitalism has preached subsistence wages and even today appears to know no bounds for its greed and exploitation of the weak. And socialism is similar to slavery in that the state promises to take care of its subjects. And what of class systems in general? Are they too now evil?

    That the Catholic church now opposes slavery means the church was wrong for all of those years? The Bible and the traditional teachings and interpretations from it ought to be what a man looks to, not to some leader’s new interpretation, unless said interpretation has some solid foundation. Even the Catholic church is surely not immune to public opinion – so it must be advisable for a wise man to look to previous ages for a more objective view of the truth.

83. 83 Comment by Frank on 8 March 2008:

    Woodcutter,

    the point you seem to be missing is that: all masters are not bad masters, and slavery does allow for the protection of the weak and the stupid: those who would not be able to take care of themselves.

    It is just that the most capable and virtuous rule over the less so. Someone must gather the crops, someone must build the farming tools etc., and someone must undergo strenuous education and training to become well suited for governing and heading the local militia. Slavery provided a system to resolve the questions of who should do what, just as does a class system.

    Our modern society today expects an aloof federal government and aloof mega corporations to take care of us all. If they treat us well, then such a system is just. However, if they give into temptation and treat us badly, then such a system is unjust. The masters knew their slaves; our masters in Washington and Wall Street do not. The masters were Christians; our masters in Washington and Wall Street are predominantly not.

    In my opinion slavery was a mistake, but morality is not one of the reasons.

84. 84 Comment by Frank on 8 March 2008:

    I wonder if I could get reparations from Bill Gates… The prices he charges for his software are unjust and undeserved – he can only charge such outlandish fees because he holds a near monopoly. So, in a sense he claims the right to exploit us because of his dominant position over the market, just as might a king or a slave master. And Gates provides us no protection or guidance in return.

85. 85 Comment by Ploni Almoni on 9 March 2008:

    Just a couple quick clarifications. I didn’t bring up the Shoah; someone asked me about it and I replied. I would never compare it to American slavery, except to say that both are examples where group responsibility applies. One reason I used the word “Shoah” is that the word “Holocaust” has become corrupted by such abuse.

    I never wrote what was attributed to me above, “Slavery is a very immoral act”. If you check, you’ll see that I was talking specifically about American slavery. I know essentially nothing about the history, but even granting all my correspondents’ factual claims, the institution of American slavery (including the overseas slave trade) still seems immoral to me. I don’t think that slavery is always immoral per se.

    The suggestion that there is no white group responsibility/guilt because no living member of the group is responsible/guilty ignores the fact that a group extends through time (as Burke said about the nation). Seems to me the concept of group responsibility is easily grasped by everyone except educated modern Westerners.

86. 86 Comment by F on 9 March 2008:

    If we go back far enough in time, most every group has wronged most every other group. The solution is to forgive and remember. What ought whites do to right blacks? What ought Mongolians, Berbers, Huns, Turks, etc. do to right Europeans?

    However, slavery was rampant in Africa – you cannot say that removing blacks from slavery and taking them to another land as slaves is wrong.

    That such is done by whites over blacks actually makes it more just, since blacks appear weaker in both discipline and intellect. As Aristotle points out: it is just that the better rule over the lesser.

    Was slavery in America a case of the equal ruling over the equal, such would be unfair. The black / white divide allows for a clear division between who is citizen and who is slave, since even free blacks did not have equal rights. Similarly skin color seems to have partially distinguished the Hindu classes, as well as those of the Central and South Americans both before (Incas) and after the Spanish.

    Blacks blame whites because they are told they are equal and were mistreated. They do not know history any better than do American whites. Accepted history has become a fairy tale.

    —

    Regarding how Northerners do not share in the blame: who do you think sold a large share of the slaves to the Southerners? Are merchants innocent?

87. 87 Comment by woodcutter on 9 March 2008:

    Frank @ 84

    I agree one hundred percent, I was replying to James at 81 with sarcasm. I should have used quotes.

88. 88 Comment by Frank on 9 March 2008:

    Gah, yea I had you mistaken, apologies.

89. 89 Comment by Allen Wilson on 10 March 2008:

    If the Bible does not condemn slavery, but instead regulates it and lays out duties of slave to master and master to slave, then slavery is not immoral, much less evil, regardless of what the Catholic church might have said by 1893, when it was already over with for all practical purposes anyway.

    As for ‘group responsibility’, or however else anyone wants to put it, I am not a group that lived 150 years ago. I am not responsible for slavery regardless of whether it was ‘immoral’ or ‘evil’, and I will not be held responsible for it. If you try to hold me a part of some group, and then say that that group has committed a ‘crime’ real or imagined, then you hold me personally responsible for something which you know very well I never did. That is indeed corruption of blood if we are talking about racial or ethnic groups, no matter who may wish to deny it. You are also being dishonest by saying I am responsible for something you know I never did.

    My money, what little I have, is hard earned while having to tolerate discrimination and bigotry from politically correct scum and their favourites, including some Yankee immigrants who come into my homeland and try to treat me as their inferior. My money did not come from the labour of any slave. It’s mine, and nobody has any right to steal it from me using some pseudo-moral, pseudo-historical excuse.

    For those who wish to hold me responsible for something I never did, if you endeavour to steal what is mine and what belongs to my family and neighbours because of the mere colour of our skin, then be prepared for a fight. To hell with all of your silly self-righteous ‘group responsibility’ abstractions. We are talking mass robbery of people who are already becoming economically dispossessed and have a bleak future ahead. You words are irresponsible and will only serve to encourage and justify a real crime, and lead to further social discord and further breakdown of good will and harmony between black and white, just as the crimes of the Lincolnites, reconstruction and the so-called ‘civil rights’ movement and all that related propaganda have done.