Are We Born Innocent?

One of the presumptions of civilized men everywhere is that the newborn child is "born innocent," which in this application means "not guilty of any crime or evil deed." The conception rests on a precept of justice that's been under heavy attack for decades: individual responsibility, the assertion that a man cannot justly be held responsible for the deeds of others.

Among the more significant aspects of the attack is the clamoring of black racialist hucksters for "reparations:" a demand that present-day white Americans pay trillions of dollars in penalties -- through the federal government, of course -- that present-day black Americans would receive in "compensation" for the economic harm done to blacks of 150 years ago by slavery. Inasmuch as no present-day white American has ever owned a slave and no present-day black American has ever been a slave, that would constitute a transfer of the presumed guilt of all white Americans of 150 years ago onto the shoulders of white Americans of today. It's a jarring premise, inasmuch as slaveholders were less than one percent of the population of pre-Civil War America. Indeed, less than one percent of contemporary Americans are even related to the slaveholders or the slaves of yore.

Should the precept of individual responsibility be removed from our legal system, claims such as the above could be fashioned into law and rammed down our throats at once.

The application to race relations could hardly be clearer. Young blacks, steeped in rhetoric that persuades them that "whitey is the enemy," proceed to treat whites that way. Whites, few of whom wish blacks anything but good, sense the hostility of blacks and distance themselves reflexively. Tensions rise that cannot be dissipated. Incidents of interracial violence become more frequent. The cycle of hostility stokes itself.

Scary, eh? But there are other facets to it that tend to escape our notice...until someone possessed of unusual percipience brings them to light:

Our society has forgotten the wonder of men in its quest for retribution against men and boys who often weren't even alive when women were being discriminated against. [Helen Smith, Men on Strike: Why Men are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream -- and Why it Matters] [Emphasis added by FWP]

Dr. Smith's focus is on the effects on American men of the perverse incentive structures now in place concerning marriage, fatherhood, career, and other aspects of male behavioral choices. The modern feminist movement, which rides on an undercurrent of resentment of men for being men, has transferred its anger at prior generations of men -- much of which is entirely irrational and unjust -- onto current and future generations who have done them no harm. Its success at reshaping the laws concerning marriage, divorce, and family matters to favor women heavily has reaped the whirlwind: a gale that propels young men away from the traditional pattern of acceptance of commitment, responsibility, and hard work for the welfare of their families.

In the environment thus produced, young women have come to assume predatory intentions and a lack of responsibility in young men. That attitude is quite clear to young men, many of whom have seen their parents' marriages collapse from the same effect, usually with savagely destructive effects upon their fathers. Their suspicion of the "marriage trap" and its potential consequences has caused men to resist romantic involvement, sometimes lifelong. That shift in male behavior has left innumerable women involuntarily single long into their thirties...if, indeed, they ever marry at all. Since women's desire for children has not been dampened, many conceive by young men unwilling to assume the burdens of marriage and fatherhood, such that approximately four out of every ten minor children are being reared in single-parent households.

Well, that's what you get when you pre-convict a baby of various high crimes and misdemeanors for the sin of being white, or possessing a Y chromosome.

Forgive me, Gentle Reader. This is a subject about which it's difficult for me to remain calm. Too many people are suffering unjustly. Too many of the sufferers are children. And as Mark Steyn has ably pointed out, "demography is destiny." Our ongoing production of interracial and intergender hostility, coupled to its consequences for child-bearing and child-rearing, is enough all by itself to doom these United States. We're already seeing some of its consequences in contemporary politics. (Cf. Eric Holder and the New Black Panther voter-intimidation scandal.)

I prefer a world in which we're presumed innocent at birth -- a world in which a man cannot be held liable for the crimes of others. But we won't have such a world until we cease to pay even the slightest degree of respect to the rantings of persons who make angry demands in the name of races, sexes, ethnicities, religions, or groups of any other sort. To these eyes, that day appears far off.

Just one more reason to stay home behind a dead-bolted door.