A Grand And Evil Experiment

In the era of sailing ships, the New World was difficult to reach. Those who desired to participate in the American experiment had to face weeks, sometimes months of hard living and a significant possibility of death at sea. The hardships and hazards diminished slowly as the Nineteenth Century progressed, by stages bringing us the steam engine, the steel-hulled ocean-going vessel, and ever more reliable methods of navigation and reference.

The involuntary human cargoes some of the sailing ships brought to these shores initiated a second, sociological experiment: a biracial society, at first composed of free white men and black slaves; later, of freed black slaves and the white free born.

That experiment, which looked hopeful up to recently (by historical measures), is looking rather grim today. But it doesn’t stand alone; it’s part of a larger pattern with even more ominous implications.

---

Earlier today I stumbled upon this bit of opinion from Anthony Bryan:

The black/white experiment has failed.

For almost 150 years the United States has been conducting an experiment. The subjects of the experiment: black people and working-class whites. The hypothesis to be tested: Can a people taken from the jungles of Africa and forced into slavery be fully integrated as citizens in a majority white population?

The whites were descendants of Europeans who had created a majestic civilization. The former slaves had been tribal peoples with no written language and virtually no intellectual achievements. Acting on a policy that was not fair to either group, the government released newly freed black people into a white society that saw them as inferiors. America has struggled with racial discord ever since.

This is not perfectly accurate. Racial discord is actually a modern development. It first became significant in the 1960s, tragically (and most ironically) after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Johnsonian “Great Society” programs nominally intended to help American Negroes rise to social and economic parity with American Caucasians. The surge of conscience-powered compassion among whites presented black race hustlers with an exploitable opportunity. They hastened to make full use of it.

Nevertheless, social and economic division along racial lines has been a constant feature of American society since Emancipation. American society has confronted the resulting challenges for a century and a half. Bryan summarizes his conclusions about this experiment rather starkly:

The experiment has failed. Not because of culture, or white privilege, or racism. The fundamental problem is that white people and black people are different. They differ intellectually and temperamentally. These differences result in permanent social incompatibility.

Bryan’s dismissal of “culture, or white privilege, or racism” as the causes for contemporary racial discord is difficult to refute. Indeed, the problems are rooted in a Grand and Evil Experiment: the stealthy substitution of a vicious, inherently divisive dogma in place of American individualism in the Christian tradition.

---

In commenting on several recent fabrications of racist incidents and similar expressions of bigotry, John Hayward discourses thus:

What all of these stories, and so many others, have in common is the assumption of bad faith by liberals, who claim they can read the minds of everyone from dinner-party guests to society at large and detect the dark secret impulses seething beneath every word and deed. The worst bad motives are assumed for every action, including something as harmless as a short woman asking a taller department-store patron to grab a box of detergent off the top shelf for her. If events that cannot be construed as social-justice crimes are not ready to hand, the liberal will simply invent them, transforming lies into Deeper Truth with the magical power of leftist ideology. We’re even presumed guilty of crimes no one actually committed, most notably the horrible “anti-Muslim backlash” that never actually happens after Muslim terrorists commit atrocities.

This presumption of guilt is absolutely crucial to collectivism. The Left must teach its subjects to think of themselves as criminals. That’s the only way law-abiding people will endure levels of coercive power that would normally require specific accusations, a fair trial, and the possibility of appeals. Social-justice “crimes” can be prosecuted without any of those things. There is no appeal from the sentence, and no statute of limitations on the crimes, as any left-winger who thinks today’s American citizens need to suffer for the historical offense of slavery will be happy to explain to you. There’s no evidence you can present in your defense, for the Left has read your mind, and knows better than you what demons lurk in its recesses.

Gentle Reader, it cannot be put better than that.

Collectivism – the doctrine that rights and responsibilities adhere not to individuals, but to groups – is a gospel of unending strife. But the ordinary man cannot be moved to take part in such strife without having something to blame on “the Other.” So Negroes must imagine Caucasians to be the source of their problems with crime and lack of economic advancement; women must conceive of men as their oppressors; “the young” must blame “the old” for their struggles at getting employment; and so forth.

Note that just as Anthony Bryan states that “white people and black people are different,” so also are men and women different. So also are the young and the old different. So also are urbanites and suburbanites different, Northerners and Southerners different, Christians and Jews different, et cetera ad nauseam infinitam. Indeed, every individual differs from every other, in innumerable ways. It’s the factual soil in which individualism is rooted: You are unique, with a unique and irreplaceable soul; therefore, only you are responsible for your destiny.

Some differences matter more than others. Some are contextual and mutable, while others are innate and permanent. Some can be accommodated and harmonized; others are immiscible, requiring separation. They exist beyond our opinions and despite our preferences; indeed, they can be critical to the survival of both individuals and nations. But as long as we cleave to the individualist premise that each of us is alone responsible for himself, we can navigate among our differences, making use of the useful ones, coping with the ones that cause difficulties, and avoiding the ones that cause friction.

The substitution of the collectivist premise permits evil minded persons to create discord. If we can be induced to see John Passerby not as an arbitrary individual with his own priorities and obligations, but as black, or female, or Jewish, we can be trained to fear him...and to hate him.

---

Collectivist hustlers don’t just strive to herd the rest of us into mutually hostile groups. They also tend to congregate with one another:

Just check out Rev. Al’s involvement in the incident at Freddy’s Fashion Mart: 7 dead, and the Crown Heights Riots: 2 dead. Video Tale of Al Sharpton

Obama’s had “Sharpy” to the White House more than 60 times. Recently Al was seated right next to Vice President Joe Biden. The VP, once widely quoted as saying paying taxes was “patriotic” had no problem sitting next to, and having his picture taken, with a guy who owes $4.5 million to “Uncle Joe’s” precious government.

When tensions and violence were reaching dangerous levels Barack was equally at ease having this proven racial provocateur, and fellow community organizer, acting very publicly as his advisor. Sharpton’s actions fit right in with the president’s own history of provocatively thrusting himself into incidents that were within the purview of local law enforcement. Cambridge police acted “stupidly”. If he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon” Martin.

And now Obama joins with Attorney Eric Holder in calling into question the fairness of America’s long standing Grand Jury System. Holder, the same fellow, who refused to pursue a case against 3 members of the New Black Panthers caught on video tape wielding a club outside a polling place in Philadelphia, is openly critical of the Staten Island jury, despite the fact he has virtually no access to 60 pieces of evidence and the testimony of 50 witnesses.

Is it because no one else will tolerate them? Perhaps, but it seems more likely that they need to consult and coordinate with one another to make their experimental techniques effective. Note also that collectivists willingly congregate across group lines. The Left makes room for every sort of collectivism. Its activists get along quite well with one another...until the moment one group starts to prosper at the expense of another, of course.

If you’re having bloody fantasies about throwing grenades into certain tightly packed convention halls, you’re not alone.

---

The collectivist premise has completely permeated American society. Hardly a day goes by when the news media lack all indication of its effects upon us. Indeed, the media are instrumental in the promotion of the collectivist premise. Its barons eagerly promote stories that exacerbate inter-group tensions, for a simple reason: strife sells newspapers and advertising.

A return to the individualist premise wouldn’t automatically solve all our society’s problems. It isn’t sufficient, though it is necessary. As I said earlier, some of the differences among us are immiscible. They will eventually require certain groups to be separated from the main mass. But individualism as the central principle of law and social order is an absolute necessity.

It wasn’t “white racism” that killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
It isn’t “patriarchal oppression” that denies women the fulfillment of their have-it-all ambitions.
It isn’t a bunch of evil old folks determined to control everything that’s caused the plague of youth unemployment.

It’s time to end the Grand and Evil Experiment.