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.