Fallacies
Probably all societies work better with a certain quantity of comfortable delusions, but America seems to operate with nothing but delusions. Large policies have been and continue to be based on an imaginary view of the world which trumps common sense:
• You can have a First World economy and military with a Third World population.
• Special privileges and billions of dollars in welfare can eliminate the resentments of minorities.
• Billions of dollars of foreign aid can win the friendship of foreigners.
• Being “a nation of immigrants” is a wonderful thing.
• Government subsidy of medical care improves care and lowers costs.
• Calling it “collateral damage” excuses the murder of innocents.
• The war of 1861-1865 was motivated by an altruistic desire to give freedom and equality to black people.
• Guaranteeing the profits of bankers and stock speculators makes for general prosperity.
• Taking off your shoes and belt at the airport and the county courthouse helps in the fight against terrorism.
• Iraq had to be invaded because it was responsible for 9/11 and had weapons of mass destruction. (That the attack was made by Saudi Arabians, from a country with which George W. Bush has profitable connections, is never noted.)
• Wars can be won by vast expenditures on complicated weapons and a military that is mostly a bureaucracy and social engineering agency.
• America has the world’s best military. (Despite the fact that a few morons armed with plastic tableware successfully attacked a major city and the imperial military headquarters and that many overseas expeditions have been mismanaged failures.)
• Politicians care about our wellbeing.
• “Gun control” reduces violence.
• Islam is really “a religion of peace.” (George W. Bush says so, and he is a wise and good man.)
• Presidents are wise and well-informed and know what’s best. (Except Nixon.)
• Democracy will flourish among all peoples if only bad leaders are thrown out of power.
• A society can survive and remain healthy when the entertainment media are suffused with filthy language, depraved morals, narcissism, and nihilistic violence.
• World peace can be maintained by American hostility to Russia, China, and Iran.
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One might as well say that the Romans would have been wrong to try to keep their empire from crumbling because today he has a French friend of old Germanic stock who wouldn't exist if the barbarians hadn't mixed with the Gallo-Romans...
I meant to add here, but forgot, that it would nevertheless be completely idiotic to attempt to restore the Roman Empire because its culture was less decadent than modern France's.
"I do agree that negroes were better off under slavery"
I meant to say segregation, not slavery.
Thank you for your reply, MOSES Nicholas. I do not have any "casual to very good" black friends(mainly because I found many of my black peers to be unbelievably whiny and annoying) and I do have reservations about black culture, but I stick to what the Pope said about "racial prejudice and ethnic animosity" being morally bankrupt. I do agree that there is no right to vote(I do not believe in democracy), no right to go to certain schools, and no right to live in certain neighborhoods but I do think that there is something inherently unjust about segregation. While Jesus did not rebuke the Samaritan woman for being wary of Jews(the Samaritans being a race that were looked down upon by Jews) He did try to paint them in a better light to His fellow Jewish brethren in His Good Samaritan story as a way to get them to treat the Samaritans better as well as preach the goodness of helping others. I just do not think that people should be treated differently because of their phenotype or considered to be different regardless of their phenotype just because of their racial background(example: I know a nice white woman who is of quarter Native descent and I know a family of white-looking girls who are of half-white half-Hindu descent).
That being said, I do not agree with the race-haters and the racists but I do agree with Mr. Jacobi that they are right in that the onus is upon black people to show that they can be trusted. What you say, MOSES Nicholas, about the Romans, implying that we shouldn't fault the Southern whites for trying to protect their civilization from a race unused to such civilization, I fully agree with. Seeing the way many blacks act nowadays, I understand the Southern position. What I do not agree with is White Supremacy.
I do agree that we shouldn't romanticize either modern days or the past. Both have things wrong with them.
Svar, these are large historical nad moral issues that do not reduce well to brief discussions. Segregation was formalised in the South in the later 19th century (though it had long been de facto commonplace in the North, though with vastly fewer black peoiple). It occurred at that time because the civilising influence of the Old South remained powerful, despite Reconstruction, until the rise of a later generation that had not had that civilising influence. The result was a widespread breakdown of public and private behaviour that the white people of the time, Northern as well as Southern, regarded as a major problem. Segregation came about partly for reasons that you suggest but also was favoured by many good and benevolent people as a benefit and protection to the blacks. There were fears that continuing friction with the mass of whites would wipe them out. Indeed some people advocated the complete elimination of the blacks, something which many abolitionists had wanted but no Southerner suggested until after Reconstruction. We now have an official narrative that dysfunction in the black population is die to slavery, when the exact opposite is true. It is the Northern cities with their impersonal and hypocritical "equality" that have created the problems of today. Our entire public discussion of this issue, historically and of the present, is phony---designed mostly not for the benefit of the black people, but to gratify the self-righteousness and cultural domination of the Northern intelligentsia, and their preference for abstractions over reality. There is no need crying over what never happened, but it would have been far better and healthier if the South had been allowed to evolve in its own way. No large group of Americans has ever known the black people better or had their welfare more truly at heart than the planters of the Old South.
I believe I am safe and venerable company in saying that Christian charity and brotherhood do not require an artificial equality. Indeed, to treat unequal people the same is not charity at all.
Let's move on.
On this not business of not romanticising the past. All ages have their good and bad points, etc. etc.etc.
We hear this alot today but it is false as hell and should be ignored at all costs. What kind of a people would come back from a world war and have themselves declared the greatest generation ? Certainly not the folks who did the fighting and won the war, that is demonstrably true. What kind of a historian would say our times are at least of equal stature to other periods of human history ? No historian at all would ever say that unless he were being paid to tell lies and to repeat lies.
"No large group of Americans has ever known the black people better or had their welfare more truly at heart than the planters of the Old South.
I believe I am safe and venerable company in saying that Christian charity and brotherhood do not require an artificial equality. Indeed, to treat unequal people the same is not charity at all."
Now there is one honest soul still admiring amidst the entire pack of wolves. Thank God for the venerable old Southerner, Clyde Wilson.
Clyde, when you are dead and gone,
And your time on earth has past,
I "ll never forget you offering peace,
By telling enemies to to kiss your a$$!