Saturday, October 17, 2009

Where the rubber meets the road on "equality"

In a new entry today at VFR, Lawrence Auster gets down to it in two paragraphs:

Lawrence Auster writes:

Everyone wants to be superior

Contemporary America says it believes in the equality of all groups and cultures, but in reality none of those groups or cultures believes in equality. Each group wants to be superior and dominant. Blacks don’t want to be equal, they want to be superior and dominant. Homosexuals don’t want to be equal, they want to be superior and dominant. Hispanics don’t want to be equal, they want to be superior and dominant. Muslims don’t want to be equal, they want to be superior and dominant. Feminist women don’t want to be equal, they want to be superior and dominant. The only group today that doesn’t want to be superior and dominant, the only group that sincerely believes in the equality of all groups, is the historic Anglo-European majority population and culture of the United States.

The non-liberal truth is that in any given society, one group or culture must be dominant and set the tone and standards for the rest. There is thus no substitute for making the decision as to which group or culture will be dominant, or, by continuing to bleat about the wonders of equality, passively letting that decision be made for us by others. Liberalism has no answer to this problem, because its only answer to all problems is to call for more equality. I therefore propose that the traditional, Anglo-European majority culture of this country, shorn of its suicidal liberal belief in the equality of all groups and cultures, be the dominant culture.

Mr. Auster's entry reminds me of several related entries, both recent and not-so-recent, archived at this blog. As to the latter, there was the entry dealing with the Congressional Republicans' ecstasy at now being in the minority. As to the former, there was the entry where we concluded that school segregation was the answer to the dilemma of having whites-favorable rules applying to non-white school students.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, Anglo-Europeans want to be superior too...they just have opted for a superficial moral superiority because other forms of superiority have proven unsatisfying.

Of course, moral superiority is just as unsatisfying, as far as I can tell. Those who are really morally superior are too good to contemplate or enjoy their moral superiority (in fact, the moral inferiority of everyone else seems to cause them distress). Those who are only superficially morally superior are in the same position of the fox playing sour grapes.

I think that it's worth identifying the cultural characteristics which made Anglo-European culture so successful. To a large extent, those are associated with Christian and specifically Protestant ideals. I know that it's polite to pay lip-service to Judaism's role in that, but...the historical charge that Jews usually obtained their profits at the expense of their Christian neighbors contains far too much truth for us to fully ignore it, uncomfortable as it may make us.

What is valuable about Judaism (as a culture, rather than a racial strain) is encompassed by its correspondence with Protestant values, just as most of what is good about Catholicism reflects the influence of Protestant morality in reforming Rome's ideas of legitimacy and authority. Strains of Judaism which reject Protestant ideas with respect to religious legitimacy and moral authority do not deserve to be considered as part of the heritage which built Western Civilization.

And here I will indulge myself a bit and make the claim that Protestant Christianity deserves a special accolade for its sincere (and remarkably successful) attempt to return to the original values of Christianity as they were taught and exemplified by Christ, with proper attention to how those who knew Him personally interpreted and tried to implement those teachings.

The non-racist (not anti-racist) strain in reformed Christianity is very clear. It does not provide any latitude to condemn anyone because of race, nor does it disdain the natural affection that humans very properly should show to their own kith and kin. Adversarial racism, the disparagement of another race, is unchristian. But native love of one's own culture and relatives (even distant relatives) is permitted.

The positive affirmation of one's own kind is as natural as mother love...it is actually the same thing attenuated by degree of relation. Neither should be considered as the basis for a sound national or political program, but it should be as ludicrous to disparage the one as the other in politics.

Of course, modern liberals love to spout nonsense about how the natural parents of a child are the greatest threat to the child's well-being, be it in education, health care, or even simple nutrition. This is the logical result of disparagement of the native affinity all humans feel for their own kin. A recent article finding babies racist because they preferred their mothers' faces to those of strangers precisely illustrates the idiocy of denigrating love of one's natural kind.