A wrong reaction to the liberal attack on our civilization

Mark P. writes:

You wrote (in the July 11 posting about Pakistan):

“Meanwhile, another type of savage we have unleashed in our midst murdered a 27-year-old British Jew who was working in Washington, D.C. for Mark Warner’s presidential campaign. He was walking with a lady friend in Georgetown after a movie, and four savages set upon him and slashed his throat, while a couple of them attempted to rape the woman.”

Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s a** about how many Democrats are murdered by the “urban youth” they keep ramming down everyone’s throat as a model of good America. Furthermore, I don’t care to give one dollop of sympathy to a foreign political tourist mucking around in the United States trying to help another über-liberal get into office so that even more “urban youth” can emigrate to America and commit more crimes. As far as I’m concerned, this is poetic justice.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

LA replies:

What—are you going to be indifferent to (or even gleeful about) black savagery when it kills liberals, and hate black savagery when it kills conservatives? That would make it impossible for you to oppose black savagery.

The moment we start saying that the enemy of our enemy is our friend, or is an embodiment of poetic justice, or is not to be judged negatively, no matter how vicious he may be, we have become moral relativists, or rather moral nihilists, evaluating all things by the criterion of whether they advance our hatreds. It is a tendency that has deeply damaged the paleocon, paleo-libertarian, and Buchananite movements, rendering them incapable of offering intellectual and political leadership.

Mark replies:

1) But the paleocon, paleo-libertarian, and Buchananite movements weren’t damaged by their peculiar hatreds. They started out as good-faith movements and lost not because they were out-thought, but because of active smear campaigns against them by many elements of the Left and Right. Their current, admittedly destructive, hatreds are a symptom, not the cause, of their lack of leadership.

[LA replies: I disagree utterly. This is the victimological paleocon myth, by which the paleocons justify spending their whole lives hating neocons. I agree the neocons have done many bad things. But they haven’t done those bad things just to paleocons, they’ve done them to conservatism, they’ve done them to America. The neocons are what they are, they believe the things they believe, and they’ve done what they’ve done. They’re political players, and they’ve won. If you oppose them, oppose them. But that’s not the paleocon attitude. The paleocon attitude is this perpetual whine about how the neocons have personally victimized them. It’s just like the neo-Confederate attitude, in which the South was wholly innocent, and the evil North just did all these evil things to them. It’s also, not coincidentally, like the pro-Palestinian attitude, in which the Palestinian are wholly innocent victims of an entirely unnecessary and gratuitous Israeli oppression. As Scott McConnell, an exponent of this view, wrote in a recent cover article in The American Conservative, the Israelis could easily resolve the Palestinian question (yes, he actually said that!); but they refuse to do so, out of sheer heartlessness and cruelty. In any case, the paleocons’ conviction that they have been, not defeated in political battle, but unfairly cheated of their place in the sun, which justifies in their minds their posture of chronic resentment, prevents them from waging any effective intellectual and political battle now. It assures continued neocon dominance of the right, given the absence of any plausible and responsible alternatives.]

2) Yes, it’s nice to have principles, but having principles is not the same thing as winning. Look, I understand that the timbre of VFR is not based on petty Schadenfreude outbursts such as mine. I understand that it’s right and decent to condemn my position, given the purpose of the site. I’m just hoping that this movement can sustain itself on such noble principles alone. I doubt liberals like the guy who worked for Warner would give you the same courtesy as you give him if he knew who you were.

[LA replies: It’s not about having “noble principles.” It’s about avoiding becoming a relativist / nihilist / perpetual victim and thus a destructive loser.]

Mark also wrote:

1) When two devils are fighting, do you care who wins? One would hope they would kill each other. In this case, one liberal got dusted; another learned her lesson; and four criminals are about to get life in prison. Again, good riddance.

2) I am universally opposed to black anarchy and want it stopped. Meanwhile, black anarchy is universally supported by white liberals. So when a white liberal is taken down by the same anarchy they support…hey…great. Poetic justice.

[LA replies: I’ve already explained what is objectionable about this attitude.]

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 14, 2006 06:17 PM | Send