Sunday, April 8, 2012

Terminus Part 3: Suppressing Communications

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell

Sharp-eyed readers will note that the link to National Review Online has vanished from my list of useful or interesting sites. Some will ask why; others will know.

For those not yet aware, the reason is this John Derbyshire article:

There is much talk about “the talk.”

“Sean O’Reilly was 16 when his mother gave him the talk that most black parents give their teenage sons,” Denisa R. Superville of the Hackensack (NJ) Record tells us. Meanwhile, down in Atlanta: “Her sons were 12 and 8 when Marlyn Tillman realized it was time for her to have the talk,” Gracie Bonds Staples writes in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Leonard Greene talks about the talk in the New York Post. Someone bylined as KJ Dell’Antonia talks about the talk in The New York Times. Darryl Owens talks about the talk in the Orlando Sentinel.

Yes, talk about the talk is all over.

There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too. My own kids, now 19 and 16, have had it in bits and pieces as subtopics have arisen. If I were to assemble it into a single talk, it would look something like the following.

Reading Derbyshire's piece to the end is a prerequisite to the completion of this article. Make note of any assertions in it that you think you can challenge on objective grounds; I can't find any.

I'll wait.

* * *

Back at Eternity Road, I posted a piece titled The Shamans, which concerned itself primarily with various victim-groups' assertion of rights over who may use certain words. Inasmuch as that piece isn't currently accessible, and that I not be accused of being excessively indirect, here are the words I cited:

  • Victimist blacks often call one another "nigger," often as an expression of fellowship or approbation. Indeed, a rap act of some notoriety named itself Niggers With Attitude, apparently without embarrassment.
  • Homosexuals feel no constraint about calling one another "queers," "dykes," "queens," or "faggots," even if the rest of us are not licensed to do so. Indeed, one of its activist groups is named "Queer Nation."
  • Women who ascribe to a particular shade of feminism make free and frequent reference to their "cunts," which is a hangin' offense for any possessor of a Y chromosome. A professor of Women's Studies at a relatively well-known university has been known to discourse on "cuntal dialectics."

Taboos centered on individual words are quite irritating enough. Taboos on specific facts and concepts, however upsetting certain persons find them, are entirely unacceptable.

In a previous piece titled Pieties, inaccessible for the same reason, I wrote thus:

One cannot challenge the pieties of a society without provoking condemnation or ostracism. To question a piety, even along its margins, is to ask to be thrown out of the church. This is an absolute that applies to all peoples and times.

Pieties have their dangers. The unquestioned belief, in late 17th Century France, that Catholics were morally superior to Huguenots allowed Louis XIV to revoke the Edict of Nantes, the decree of religious tolerance for the Protestant minority. The resulting mass emigration of Huguenots to Belgium weakened France severely, as the Huguenots were among the most industrious and educated persons of northern France. Indeed, part of the Catholic animosity toward them was that they worked on Sundays, and thus had a competitive edge over Catholics in business and commerce.

If we are in thrall to a piety contrary to the actual facts of our society, we are in danger too. The question is only of degree.

No decent person would gainsay the principle of equality before the law. It's the only sort of enforceable equality that doesn't violate the rights of Man. He who commits a crime by the written laws should face an impersonal juridical procedure and receive an impersonal sentence -- impersonal in the sense that they should take no account of anything about the accused other than what he did and the circumstances within which he did it. Plainly, we have departed from this simple, honorable standard in many ways. That doesn't vitiate the ideal.

Black-identity groups, which have grown powerful in recent years, have used the law to impose the equality-of-the-races piety on us whether we agree or not. This has led to a marked inequality of treatment of the races, with net benefits flowing coercively to blacks, in particular to politically active blacks, at the expense of whites and Asians. As a matter of justice, this situation is indistinguishable from apartheid and Jim Crow, except for the race of the beneficiaries.

If there are real, substantial differences among the races, whether in ability, civility, or willingness to conform to the law, this could be the death blow to our society.

How does that line up against National Review's decision to fire John Derbyshire?

* * *

The core of the matter isn't the specifics of the differences among racial, ethnic, creedal, and other identifiable groups; it's the unwillingness, among those who want to be deemed "acceptable" in "polite society," to allow anyone to discuss the possibility that such differences might exist.

Please note that I'm not talking about the geneses of whatever differences exist among such groups. Bright and knowledgeable people have been fighting the nature-vs.-nurture war for longer than I've been alive. That doesn't matter. What matters are the present-tense attitudes, capacities, limitations, and above all the behaviors of those groups, as statistical aggregates. If there are real, significant differences, particularly as regards matters such as intelligence and propensity toward lawbreaking, refusing to face them frankly does a disservice to the whole nation.

Allow me to be even more explicit:

  • If American Negroes, as a statistical aggregate, are markedly less intelligent and/or more inclined toward lawlessness than non-Negroes;
  • If American Hispanics, as a statistical aggregate, are more inclined toward the formation and protection of violent gangs than non-Hispanics;
  • If American homosexuals, as a statistical aggregate, are more inclined toward the sexual victimization of minors than heterosexuals;
  • If American Muslims, as a statistical aggregate, generally support the worldwide imposition of sharia law and the reduction of non-Muslims to dhimmi status;
  • If American women, as a statistical aggregate, nurse a sense of grievance toward "the patriarchy" and believe that American men work to "oppress" them;

... then pretending otherwise will cause social, economic and political damage.

Note the parallel structure. In any sentence that contains it, the most important word will always be if: the admission that the validity of the consequent depends upon the truth of the premise. Thus, every proposition above is legitimately debatable as a factual assertion: Are American Negroes less intelligent as an aggregate than non-Negroes? Are they more prone to lawlessness and violence? And so on through the litany? Proponents of both evaluations should marshal objective facts to their sides and present them for open examination...but nothing of the sort has been considered acceptable since the public flaying of Arthur Jensen.

Worse, as I wrote in yet another currently inaccessible piece:

One of the natural laws, which should be so obvious as not to require saying, is that word gets around. Something that people in general would want to know is something they will know, eventually. If you assist them in learning it, you will earn their gratitude. If you retard their edification, then when they've finally learned it, if they learn that you were responsible for denying them the data they need, you will reap the whirlwind.

Thus, the suppression of frank discussion of differences among identifiable groups will serve to sharpen animosity and distrust among members of those groups, playing into the hands of the divide-to-conquer strategists of the political class. The resulting tension will mount until relieved by the violent expression thereof.

You do the math.

* * *

Today is Easter Sunday: the commemoration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Redeemer of Mankind. It's supposed to be a day of joy among Christians, on which we give thanks for His ministry among us, His New Covenant, and His willingness to be sacrificed for our sakes. But it has another aspect, as well:

    Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of he Jews? Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?
    Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me; what hast thou done?
    Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.
    Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then?
    Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end I was born, and for this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. [Gospel According To John, 18:33-37]

Truth -- the admission that reality is indifferent to our opinions, desires, aspirations, and fantasies -- is the sacred abstraction. He who named Himself the Way, the Life, and the Truth thus told us something of transcendent importance:

  • Truth stands above all notions and fictions;
  • Life depends completely on the acknowledgement of that which is objectively true;
  • The one and only Way to life -- temporal and eternal -- is to live in complete recognition and humble acceptance of the truth.

Therefore, an ironclad dedication to learning the truth -- the objective, verifiable, opinion-independent facts -- and living by it is the highest of all priorities. There can be no other.

* * *

Ironically, National Review has a longstanding reputation as a "Catholic institution." Its founder, the late William F. Buckley, was a lifelong Catholic, and a quite serious one. His soul must surely wince at the sight of his inheritors' decision to cast out a worthy writer for daring to express a truth they found threatening to their place in the political Establishment.

But of course, that's not the worst aspect of the thing for those of us still under the veil of Time. National Review has implicitly aligned itself with the purveyors of a pretty fantasy: the notion that we are all exactly alike in every important way, and that any suggestion to the contrary is to be execrated even as it is spoken. More, the editors of National Review have taken upon themselves the role of enforcers of that fantasy.

This is a declaration of solidarity with the forces of evil.

I've subscribed to the print edition of the magazine for some years. Before that, I visited the online edition daily. No longer.

Testify to the truth if you want to be welcome in my home.

12 comments:

Martin McPhillips said...

Re-reading Derbyshire's piece again this morning the problem I have with it is a near total absence of generosity of spirit, and that is most obvious in his savage wielding of the IQ cudgel. IQ can be the lens of the eugenics-o-scope view of the world, and I think that's the implied case here. It's one thing, too, to write without sentimentality and quite another to write sadistically.

I'm not known myself for any special abiltity with the gentle rebuke and favor the bold laying-it-out-there approach, but Derbyshire shows just a tad too much complementarity with the Left's own (camouflaged) herd management approach to their black clients.

As for National Review, I think that the "new owners" there were looking for an excuse to get rid of him and here was the opportunity. Something has happened over there that's beyond the pale and this puff of smoke let them discharge a worry that someone in-house was going to betray it. We'll see what a free Derbyshire has to say when he responds, if he responds. Given the uproar he might well be joining George Zimmerman at an undisclosed location.

JoeThePimpernel said...

@Martin McPhillips

When you have the United States Attorney General referring to "his people" rather than the citizens of the United States as a whole, the time for "generosity of spirit" has long passed.

It is very telling that you don't demand "generosity of spirit" of Eric Holder and "his people."

Martin McPhillips said...

That's a rather impertinent extrapolation of my comment, Joe.

First, you don't know the level of contempt with which I regard Holder.

Second, I'm not discussing Holder et al. and feel no obligation to do so in any comment I might make about something else.

Third, what I'm really pointing out here is the crude genetic determinism implied by the use of the IQ cudgel -- the "not only are you no good, you'll always be no good" approach to a group or any group.

Eskyman said...

Derbyshire said what needed to be said.

Where's the passionate rebuttal to his article? Where is the huge fisking to show how wrong he is?

There isn't one. Of course there isn't, because what he said is the truth.

I'm not surprised in the slightest at NRO's kneejerk reaction, they've been going squishier each month. It's been some time since I had a subscription to them, and I had been reading them less often- that's now going to be, "not at all."

My last contact with them will be an email telling NRO what I think of them, and it won't be fun reading for them if they read it.

As for John Derbyshire, I'll continue to seek out his articles, especially now that he's writing with the pure quill of honesty, having put down the false pen of political correctness.

He's also been known to mention Islam with something less than abject submission, and I heartily approve of that, too!

So flame away, but I'll continue hoping that more people throw off the bonds and start telling the truth wholesale. I'm sick of the soft chains of "polite" conversation, when the only result of conservative forebearance is that we get rolled! Every dirty trick in the world is done to the Right, but somehow we're supposed to be above fighting back; well screw that.

Long live the Derb!

--Eskyman
AKA Denis Wauchope
Carlsbad, CA

furball said...

Fran, this is a test comment sent at Noon, pst, on Easter.

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ said...

And it came to pass in the year of our Lord 2012 that the truth must be tempered with a genuflection to Antonio Gramsci's political correctness. This, according to so called "conservatives". We of course must not offend the leftist race pimps and their useful idiots with anything resembling the unvarnished truth addressing the routine insults and lies hurled at those who would defend liberty and truth.

KG said...

I care not a whit if Derb showed a lack of generosity of spirit. In these perilous times, he did something far, far more important.
He spoke the truth.

Anonymous said...

I thought Derbyshire wrote an outstanding article, on the money in every respect.

The one area where I had a few misgivings was in his instruction not to be a good Samaritan to a black man. I have to recognize that in most respect this is wise, because such a situation could easily be the set up for an ambush or other danger to yourself. At the same time, I am mindful of a Christian duty here, so I cannot totally ignore this situation. I have to look for some means to deal with it without personal endangerment.

To dismiss Derbyshire is simply Marxist foolishness, the sort of thing we have to expect from our "betters." We will see a lot more of this in the near future.

Fr. D+

Weetabix said...

With regard to Derbyshire's and Arthur Jensen's persecutions: Why is OK for blacks to mock whites for their innate lower level of athletic ability, rhythm, fashion sense, or whatever, but it's absolutely unacceptable for whites to do the same?

If we examine the aggregates, blacks probably ARE more athletically endowed. If we examine the aggregates, whites probably do perform better scholastically.

Is it primarily genetic or primarily cultural? I don't care. I care about the facts.

Here's what I REALLY don't understand:
1. If the scholastic underachievement or the prison over representation really bothers blacks, why don't they change their culture to change the results? The culture, ignoring any genetic argument, has enormous impact on achievement. My kids' track coach harps on the fact that you're born with a measure of talent. You add your work to it. The sum is your ability. A person with a lower born talent can beat a person with a higher born talent if he out works the other.

2. If the scholastic underachievement or the prison over representation doesn't bother blacks (or if they take some secret pride in it), why do they care what anyone says?

Isn't success the last word in any argument? Maybe THAT'S the real issue here. Maybe on some level, they don't really care about the academics or the crime, but they want to succeed over the rest of us through legislation.

This whole issue confuses me mightily.

rickl said...

Anonymous said...
The one area where I had a few misgivings was in his instruction not to be a good Samaritan to a black man.

Agreed. Many years ago I picked up two hitchhikers, and ended up being carjacked.

The hitchhikers/carjackers were white. I would have never considered picking up black hitchhikers.

I learned a lesson that day, and it was to never pick up anybody, regardless of race, color, or creed.

CB said...

@Anonymous (April 9, 2012 10:15 PM)
Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves- Matt.10:16
High School age drivers do not have extensive experience recognizing danger on the road.
Years ago, I had the "The Talk" with my children. It was the non-black version. It proved to be instrumental in saving them from a highway ambush.
Thankfully, they called me on the cell phone to report a situation where their hearts were pulled as in the Good Samaritan story. I told them to stay back a distance until the police could be summoned. I immediately called the police who were in the area. This resulted in the arrest of the "injured person" lying along the roadside. The officer stood beside the seemingly unconscious person and said "If you move a muscle, that will be your last action." He retrieved a large knife from under the shirt of the person, arrested her and began pursuit of her accomplice who was hiding just down the hill.
My children have been raised to love and to be compassionate. But they have the personal experience of Matthew 10:16

RegT said...

Mr. McPhillips,

I enjoy your writing, and respect your intellect, but for the life of me I don't see how you can decide the content of a man's heart and intention through a small sample of his writing. Assuming that he wrote "sadistically" is as much in need of a rebuke as JoethePimpernel assuming you didn't hold Holder to the same standard of "generosity of spirit".

I read nothing in Derbyshire's article that implied "you'll always be no good". Where is _your_ generosity of spirit, sir?