Some comments from readers

James C. writes:

Several months ago I took Path To National Suicide down from the bookshelf where it had been sitting for 10 or more years to reread. Then I accidentaly stumbled on VFR which is now my browser home page. You were right on Shelby Steele even though everyone including Rush is fawning over him, and your debate with Robert Spencer was epic. I loved every minute of it. It was like a heavyweight championship fight. You were not wasting your time.

LA replies:

Thank you! With every one of these battles I get into, there are some who say, “This is silly, Auster is making a mountain out of a molehill, he’s creating unnecessary divisions among conservatives,” and there are others like yourself who see the value of it.

KE writes from Turkey:

Couple of random notes:

—George Will: An abstract human being? I know you don’t mean that as a joke, but I’m laughing my head off. And this is priceless: “insufferable combination of airless smug superiority and indifference to the concerns of ordinary humanity.” Well said :-D

—What whites really don’t understand about blacks is not what they think they don’t understand: I’m slapping my forehead with this one, Larry. And I thought I had grasped the implications of the statistical profile of crime. Funny how one fails to put two and two together—due to which, obviously, we have the expression. If a third of blacks are criminals, and if at least one family member sympathizes with them, that’s two thirds (2 out of 3, the natural absolute majority) feeling inimical towards legality and law enforcement.

It’s stuff like this that Orwell meant when he was talking about being able to see the tip of one’s nose requiring constant effort.

Keep up the good work.

Actually the figure was a third of black men, not of all blacks. But the basic reasoning still holds.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 21, 2006 11:15 PM | Send