“View from the right†is Christian rightist, and there they are arguing all men are made in the image of God, and therefore, equally entitled to rights and dignity.
Of course, they can argue this without being totally insane since they believe that everyone has an immortal soul inside, regardless of physical and mental inequality and propensity to depraved acts, but when Christians ditched their Christianity, while retaining equalism, thus becoming progressives, which began with the anti slavery movement and was more or less completed in the late 1940s, early 1950s, then, having ditched immortal souls, they then had to argue that men and women, blacks and whites, and so on and so forth were all literally equal in mean and distribution, which position is transparently insane and contrary to casual observation and common sense.
Of course, if you believe in Darwinism, then we are not equal, not individually, nor are the groups to which we belong equal. Further, we are not made in the image of God, but are risen killer apes, and not very far risen at that. Without civilization, custom, culture and such, we would all be back to killing and perhaps eating any stranger or outsider fast enough.
Further, that thin veneer of civilization over our native and natural killer ape tendencies is fragile. To extend it to people far away requires elaborate arrangements, which arrangements have to be maintained and enforced.
This latter fact, that we still are killer apes, and apt to prove it from time to time, provides a Darwinian justification for “hate†laws. Crimes between blacks and whites, crimes between men and women, crimes between religious sects, and so on and so forth perhaps need to be treated with greater severity because of the propensity for collective conflict. But if that is our justification, then we really need to be cracking down on blacks, who commit the vast majority of race hate crimes, and Muslims, who commit the vast majority of religious hate crimes. And something needs to be done about women, who are usually the ones breaking up families and destroying the lives of their children. In practice “hate†laws are directed against one group, and one group only: White males, primarily working class white males, thus such laws are thus themselves a manifestation of the hatred and intolerance that they supposedly ban, and thus themselves promote the group conflict that they purportedly suppress. It was “Tolerance†that gave us Major Hasan’s massacre at Fort Hood.
This was obvious in the recent Chick-fil-A protests. Which side demonstrated hatred, bigotry, and intolerance?
As the state and the laws are undermining, rather than promoting civilization, our killer ape nature is likely to soon be on full display. It is not in our nature to maintain civilized conduct with strangers, with people far away, with people very different from ourselves. Such arrangements have to be built, and have to be maintained, and they are not being maintained.
Most apes seldom kill members of their own species, and never make war. Chimps and men make war. Most apes are vegetarians. Chimps and bonobos are omnivores. Humans are close to being carnivores, in that in the ancestral environment you died if you did not eat some substantial amount of meat, and the stable isotope ratios found in the collagen of ancient bones indicates that primitive humans ate at about the same or higher trophic level as wolves and hyenas – meaning that they ate what wolves and hyenas ate, plus they sometimes ate wolves and hyenas, and, perhaps, sometimes each other. This suggests that humans evolved intelligence largely to facilitate cooperative violence. Humans that cooperated better tended to wipe out humans that cooperated worse. Chances are, our species is what it is because of a persistent inclination to genocide.
The Nazis killing the Jews was a really bad idea. The Nazis should have done what the progressives are doing, and absorbed them. Not only did all the smartest Jews get the hell out of Germany, some of them went to America and set to work on the atom bomb. Hitler did not get the bomb in substantial part because he got rid of “Jewish Scienceâ€. On the other hand, getting rid of the bushmen, the Amerindians, and the Australian aboriginals worked out fine. It tends to be a seriously bad idea to deliberately pursue conflict with a group that is smarter and better at cooperating than your own group. On the other hand, pursuing conflict with a group that is stupider and less capable of cooperating than your own group usually works out very nicely.  Thus the superior group should be more aggressive as a group, recklessly getting close to group conflict, and the inferior group should be more tolerant, seeking to assimilate, and seeking peace. Thus our laws and customs should be less tolerant of black race hate crimes than white race hate crimes, not more tolerant. Similarly, profiling should be encouraged, not only in crime watch, but also as a sanity check on test results and credit ratings. People who race horses do not collect all foals equally, train them equally, race them, then select those who race the best for special training and further racing. They select the foals with the best bloodlines, and give those special training, relying both on test results and ancestry.
Typos: “hyenias”, “human evolved intelligence”
Fascinating article, nonetheless.
Thanks, fixed
“Of course, they can argue this without being totally insane since they believe that everyone has an immortal soul inside, regardless of physical and mental inequality and propensity to depraved acts”
Yes, this has been my own tact. In fact for those less gifted I maintain very low expectations in order for them to be “good souls”. Namely work a job and don’t committ crime. It is those of us who are gifted with more that more is expected.
Of course if there is no soul then there is no basis for equality unless you make up genetic equality which is silly.
The Gouldian approach is to provide a pseudo scientific rationalization for genetic equality.
These days, however, the elite is succumbing to real or simulated stupidity, and simply do not notice, or pretend not to notice, the contradiction between Darwinism and equalism.
While I disagree with the article’s argument that there is something to be said for the effect of genetics on human behavior, I understand from where that mentality comes; and I wanted to drop a suggestion you might find worth considering.
Have you noticed that those who consider themselves as members of the “black community” share a general tendency to hold Marxist economic beliefs?
What I would argue is that the “black community’s” economic hardships have to do with their economic beliefs and not their genes.
Look at how long it has been argued that the “white man” has exploited other countries with their supposed free market economics. This idea has been pervasive for a very long time.
I would say to those who believe this Marxist falsehood that the free market had nothing to do with British colonialism/imperialism – that, in fact, it was because of their CORPORATIST economics and their centrally-planned monetary system that lead to their imperialism (as it has done, here in America).
And I would say to those who are inclined to believe that the widespread adoption of Marxist economics among most blacks is an indication that genetics is a factor, to consider that since the idea that “the free market is exploitative” has been going around for quite some time, and since Marxist economics actually does make people economically worse off, perhaps the apparent similarities can be explained by their generally common economic beliefs – the Minimum Wage, government affordable housing projects, anti-trust laws, etc. – rather than their genetics.
And regarding the seeming proclivity of blacks to excel in athleticism, this can, similarly, be accounted for by the harder life that comes with their belief in Marxist economics.
A harder life produces harder men. No need to appeal to genetics.
This is my belief.
I generally like your blog. Keep up the good work.
Marxism and hatred of whites is inculcated by government school. Those blacks that spend the most time at school, the most privileged blacks, are the most Marxist and most racist, and the second generation of these privileged blacks are more Marxist and racist than the rest. Thus privilege, not hardship, causes Marxism. Someone who has been affirmative actioned into an advanced degree at an elite institution and affirmative actioned into a very well paid job, requiring no actual work, (by and large, when affirmative action employees simply don’t turn up, but continue to draw pay, everyone is much relieved), and is the child of similarly privileged parents, is a lot more Marxist and racist than the average black guy in the ghetto.
What hardships did Michelle Obama suffer?
All the successful endurance runners at the olympics are not only blacks, but blacks of certain particular black African races – therefore, obviously genetic.
Aside fron the fact that, indeed, the very existence of public schools is, itself, the result of Marxist type thinking (It’s even one of the planks of Communism), the public school system has been specifically targeted by Marxists in order to convey, especially to blacks, that America, being the result of British colonialism, and holding to the supposedly free market economics of Britain, is itself exploitative;
and then they use the racism in America’s past to claim that this is essentially the same thing as when Britain invaded countries whose citizens were darker, and therefore that free market economics is somehow rigged against non-whites.
As well, this Marxist, anti-white sentiment didn’t originate in the US, but among the victims of British colonialism (who, I would add, had a bad understanding of economics).
Dinesh D’Souza explains:
How Obama Thinks
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem_print.html
“Obama Sr. grew up during Africa’s struggle to be free of European rule, and he was one of the early generation of Africans chosen to study in America and then to shape his country’s future.
“I know a great deal about anticolonialism, because I am a native of Mumbai, India. I am part of the first Indian generation to be born after my country’s independence from the British. Anticolonialism was the rallying cry of Third World politics for much of the second half of the 20th century. To most Americans, however, anticolonialism is an unfamiliar idea, so let me explain it.
“Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America. As one of Obama’s acknowledged intellectual influences, Frantz Fanon, wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, “The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races.”
“Anticolonialists hold that even when countries secure political independence they remain economically dependent on their former captors. This dependence is called neocolonialism, a term defined by the African statesman Kwame Nkrumah (1909–72) in his book Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, writes that poor countries may be nominally free, but they continue to be manipulated from abroad by powerful corporate and plutocratic elites. These forces of neocolonialism oppress not only Third World people but also citizens in their own countries. Obviously the solution is to resist and overthrow the oppressors. This was the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. and many in his generation, including many of my own relatives in India.”
Regarding Michelle Obama / hardhips, my point wasn’t that hardships create Marxists, but that hardships create harder men – referring to the athleticism issue.
She grew up around the anti-colonialist / anti-white / Marxist mentality, and was shown some facts that correlate, and was not told the difference between Corporatism and the free market, and unfortunately concluded that there was a cause and effect relationship between free markets and racism.
Regarding the countries of origins of the most successful endurance runners, there, again, the factor of harder lifestyle comes in.
Consider this assessment from Walter Williams:
South Africa after apartheid
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2002/01/09/south_africa_after_apartheid
“The tragic fact of business is that ordinary Africans were better off under colonialism. Colonial masters never committed anything near the murder and genocide seen under black rule in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Nigeria, Mozambique, Somalia and other countries, where millions of blacks have been slaughtered in unspeakable ways …”
“… Today, Zimbabwe’s Minister Robert Mugabe commits gross violations of black and white human rights. With the help of lawless thugs, Mugabe has undertaken a land-confiscation program from white farmers. Instead of condemning Zimbabwe human-rights abuses, the South African government has given Mugabe its unqualified support. Kenny says that whites treat blacks like animals. When a dog misbehaves, we don’t blame the dog — we blame the owner for improper training. In Africa, when blacks behave badly, Kenny says colonialism, imperialism, apartheid, globalization or multi-nationalism is blamed for not bringing up blacks properly.”
There, again, is that conflation of colonialism with free markets (which is expressed in the term “globalization”).
In closing, I’d like to share some of the titles of articles that this Walter Williams has written, so as to maybe entice you to consider the issues of race and economics, where they converge, from the perspective of someone who was able to escape the anti-white / anti-free-market mentality of the “black community”:
Walter E. Williams: Archives
http://www.lewrockwell.com/williams-w/williams-w-arch.html
— No More Racial Double Standards
— Leftist Race-Baiters
— Black Social Pathology
— Skools of Edukashun
— Politicians Who Foment Class Warfare
— Race and Economics
This is not my recollection of history. For example: Mugabe’s power base was and is the London School of Economics, Aristide’s power base was Harvard. Aristide and Mugabe were installed in power by British and US intervention respectively.
Notice that anti colonialism is called “anticolonialism”, not “antiimperialism”. Imperialism was directed by the British ruling elite against the piratical colonial elites, who were getting rich outside of proper establishment channels. Imperialism was itself anti colonialism, and “anticolonialism” is simply imperialism carried to ever greater extremes. Observe that all anti colonial regimes use the same language, for example “National Liberation Front”, as if they had a bulk job of rubber stamps manufactured in Harvard, which is roughly what in fact they did.
An actual national liberation movement would be unique to the traditions, history, and culture of its country, as the Somali revolution was. Instead, we get the mass mindless regurgitation of Harvard and London School of Economics talking points. One microphone, ten thousand loudspeakers. You cannot tell which anticolonialist you are hearing from, they all blur together.
In Africa, all the regimes except the Ethiopian, Somali, and Botswanan regimes are imperially installed muppet regimes. Consider, for example, the recent shenanigans on the Ivory Coast, wherein the new ruler descended upon the Ivory Coast from the IMF. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is not so much a government as a bunch of UN outposts surrounded by savages.
The colonialists were dispersed, decentralized, rule by whites. “Anti colonialism” is centralized rule by the UN, Harvard, and the London School of Economics – is imperialism. Haiti today is ruled by Harvard through NGOs, and worse off by far than when it was ruled by the Duvaliers.
It looks like I’m not going to be able to contribute much more to this discussion until I find out more about the claim that British imperialism was a response to piracy.
If you have any online resources you’d like to suggest, I’d like to take a look at them.
As I see it, Britain had some bad economic thinking that viewed global trade as a public good, rather than an individual good, such that the state was thought to have a responsibility to secure it.
(America, unfortunately, had the same economic thinking with regard to the Barbary pirates.)
So, because global trade was seen as a public good, this resulted in government-protected corporations (charters), and a corresponding war-based economic philosophy which saw trade lanes as THEIR lanes, rather than simply the routes taken by people freely trading with one another.
Er go, the imperialism. Which is inherent to the collectivist “public goods” mentality, rather than the real free market mentality, I must emphasize.
(This mentality was not unique to Britain, it should probably be said.)
Here are a couple of videos which talk about the bad economic thinking of the “public goods” mentality, I’d like to share, if anyone is interested:
Defending the Undefendable (Chapter 23: The Importer) by Walter Block
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTT_WHyzZ54
Defending the Undefendable (Chapter 30: The Scab) by Walter Block
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IiW7WgDcHA
I was unclear. The colonialists were piratical, and sometimes, as in the west indies, were indeed deemed pirates, but generally the approach, as with Clive of India and Raffles, was to disapprove of their piratical acts, and use them as justification for more centralized power, without actually going so far as to call them pirates or bandits.
In practice, of course, empire, centralization of power, and the abolition of slavery, does not seem to have been all that popular. The Indian mutiny was in substantial part caused by do-gooder land reform – it was in substantial part a revolt against do-goodism by meddling outsiders far away in London, though it was deemed by London to be a failure of the colonialists, and grounds for even more centralization of power in London.
When adventurers first started raiding and trading with distant lands, they did not bother with such high faluting theories. They peaceably purchased spices, and they aggressively stole gold and spices. They attacked ships and seized cargoes because they just plain and simply wanted those cargoes, not out of any economic rationale about enforcing English monopoly. They did not think much about whether attacking ships full of valuable cargoes was good for England. It was good for the East India company, and what is good for the East India company is good for England. The trade rationale was something of an afterthought.
Over time, they tended to transition from mobile bandits to stationary bandits, becoming, without anyone particularly realizing it, governments, governments that enforced a local monopoly over trade in spices, among other things. Many of them became rich, and returned to England to buy respectability, disturbing those who’s wealth came through respectable channels, who called these upstarts “nabobs”.
Eventually, in the nineteenth century, the center, London, belatedly realized that these adventurers had become governments, and set to taking over from these colonialists, on the rationale both of benefiting England through trade monopoly, and the rationale of benefiting the natives. Empire was a nineteenth century theory, and the trade rationale of which you speak, though a good deal older, became politically important as a rationale for this theory, a rationale for imperialism. But benefiting the natives (anti colonialism) was equally important as a rationale for this theory. Britain only started thinking of itself as an empire, imperialism, when colonialism was already in political decline, when the urgent need to do good to these far off benighted natives was a justification for cutting colonialists off at the knees.
The British empire was not conquered by imperialists, but by eighteenth century merchant adventurers, who mixed honest trade, piracy, conquest, and state formation. The nineteenth century imperialists took it over from the colonialists, and immediately the empire went into decline. In the nineteenth century, Colonialists right wing, Imperialists left wing and anti colonialist.
Today’s anti colonialism is still imperialist. Consider the path that Alassane Ouattara took to power: Educated in the US, career in Washington, raised to high position in the IMF. In due course jointly holds high position in the IMF plus high position in the Ivory government, despite the fact that he seldom visits the Ivory coast, briefly flying in from Washington from time to time, Election rigged in his favor in the Ivory Coast, UN troops, large numbers of native thugs imported from neighboring country. Ethnic cleansing of the native population. Alassane Quattara then flies in from Washington to take power, despite the fact that he had not bothered to show up in his high Ivorian government job for six years. Clearly, the power that installed him over the Ivory Coast was located in Washington, not the Ivory Coast. Imperialism is still going strong today, and it still spouts anti colonialist rhetoric. Similarly Aristide and Mugabe.
You are arguing that imperialism, and the evil oppression of those poor colored people, was a result of erroneous, anti libertarian ideas. Near as I can figure, imperialism was rationalized by the desire to end slavery and do good to the natives, and was most likely driven by the desire to prevent the colonialists from bypassing the proper class structure by getting rich shaking down rajahs and such like
Colonialism was a result of the desire to trade for wealth, and to steal wealth, and was rationalized after the fact by those economic ideas you mention. Imperialism was London bureaucrats taking over these quasi private governments the colonialists created. Thus imperialism was leftist and anti colonialist, and anti colonialism is still leftist and imperialist.
Mugabe, Aristide, and Ouattara are all obvious examples of imperialism, and they are all obvious examples of anti colonialism. Imperialism was left wing and anti colonialist, and is left wing and anti colonialist.
Imperialism/anticolonialism is an example of the near far alliance, whereby the white elite allies with the far (blacks, Muslims, Soviet communists, and so forth) against the near (high income productive whites).
You can’t be serious.
What makes East African highlanders better long distance runners then? Them being Trotskyist instead of Stalinist? Or something.
They appear to be mostly collectivists, and, to the extent that they despise the free market, their life is harder.
See my response to Jim for more, as he brought up the same point.
East Africans do much long-distance running in the name of Communism! /sarc
Oh, and I would also like to add:
No one but Ron Paul 2012!
Cthulhu!
Democracy is past its sell by date. You always wind up with a majority of the voters living off the state.
Net consumers will always out reproduce the net producers.
Also, the wealthy are a victim of their own desire for luxury. Cheap imported labor will get the franchise, if it doesn’t have it already, by universalist memes backed with implications of physical violence, if not by them then by their children.
At that point, it’s all over but the screaming.
Only if they can vote themselves a handout.
Recent events have demonstrated that those implications of physical violence are fictitious, are universalist fantasies.