Shall we respond to liberals’ attacks on our “bigotry” by affirming “bigotry” as a good?

Robert B. writes:

You say about Linda Chavez: “… she insanely accused all opponents of the bill of being driven by a bigoted racist loathing of Hispanics. ”

And so what if it is driven by bigotry? Freedom of speech allows, implicitly, for freedom of thought. Americans first debated the annexation of Mexico following the Mexican War of 1848. At the time, it was decided that they were far and away too different from us ever to be assimilable into our way of life. In the 159 years since, what has changed? Nothing. As I am fond of telling diversicrats—“If my ancestors (and thus myself) had wanted to live like Mexicans, they would have moved there, not here. I have no desire to live in a third world cess pool and neither do most Americans. If the Mexican people were capable of a higher civilization, they would have one. They have, after all, had the world’s greatest example just to the north of them for 231 years now, if they can’t get it after all that time, they never will.”

Yes, I am a cultural bigot, and, I ask, what precisely is wrong with that?

LA replies:

I both agree and disagree.

On one hand, it is correct to say that we prefer our culture to Mexico’s, that we don’t want Mexico’s culture coming here, that we prefer our own people to Mexicans, and that we resent Mexicans when they invade and take over our country (and even more we resent our leaders for allowing the Mexicans to invade and take over our country). Chavez, by calling these normal, natural, and proper feelings “bigotry,” would take away America’s right to exist as America.

On the other hand, it is incorrect to approve of “bigotry” as such, since bigotry is, by definition, morally wrong. Accused of harboring a “bigoted racist loathing of Hispanics,” Robert says in effect, “Yes, I do have a bigoted racist loathing of Hispanics, and that is a good thing.” I hope Robert can see the utter hopelessness of such a position.

This is where paleoconservatism, a movement with which I once identified, has taken a fatally wrong turn. Instead of rejecting and transcending liberalism, many paleoconservatives have accepted the liberal PC premises and have simply made themselves into liberals in reverse. Told by the liberals that they are immoral haters, the paleocons reply by proudly declaring, “Yes, we are immoral haters.” It is an intellectual and moral Black Hole.

It is also incorrect to approve of bigotry as such, for the same reason that it is incorrect to make tolerance our ideal. If tolerance is our ideal, then what is there to place limits on the tolerance? What will prevent us from tolerating criminals and enemies, as liberals inevitably end up doing?

The same with bigotry, only in reverse. If you affirm as a good your own “bigotry,” i.e., your instinctive dislike of other peoples, then you have dispensed with any moral principle that can place limits on your dislike of other peoples. Any hatred, any lie, any injustice, any crime directed at that other people is ok.

- end of initial entry -

Dan M. writes:

You say the paleo position is, “Yes, we are immoral haters.”

You’ve implied this before and I let it slide, but now I hope you’ll indulge my curiosity and tell me exactly who in public life on the paleo right has said this. I’ve been reading their stuff for a good 15 years and I’ve never seen this. Indeed, I’m one of them, and I certainly would never say this of myself. It sounds like your personal decision to disassociate yourself from them (us) was at least partly due to this, so I’m assuming that means there was more than one. How about some names of self-confessed haters?

LA replies:

Good question.

First, I didn’t say that any paleocon literally said, “Yes, we are immoral haters.” This was my phrase to bring out the meaning of what they are saying. Also, I don’t have quotes at hand of leading paleocons on this. But many people of that persuasion have said things like it many, many times, things like “Yes, I’m a bigot.” “Yes, I’m a racist.” And I’m not talking about crank emails (like Linda Chavez’s famous e-mails that she complains about), but e-mails from intelligent people with whom I would be conversing.

They also commonly speak in favor of tribalism, the “tribe.” And when they would speak of the tribe, it is clear they are rejecting any common morality beyond the tribe and implying that anything is justified for the tribe.

In fact, if there is one defining idea of paleoconservatism, it is this belief in the smallest possible human units as one’s ultimate locus of loyalty and belief. When I became a paleocon in the 1980s, I thought it meant the idea of subsidiarity, that there the family, the community, the town, the region, the state, the nation, the religion, and so on, with each of these levels of human community having its place in relation to the others and the whole, which to me was traditional American conservatism, or rather traditional American federalism as applied to culture. But then I began to realize that paleocons did not speak this way, they did not have a sense of the smaller community being within the larger community. The smaller community, the tribe, is all there is there is for them.

However, I should have made clear that when it comes to the “I am a bigot”-type statements, I was not speaking of the leading, public paleocons (since I don’t have any quotes from them either at hand or in memory saying things like this). I am speaking of an attitude coming from the general paleocon circle that I have run into over and over.

Robert B. writes:

The names “bigot” and “racist” are merely ideological nonsense pushed upon us by those who would decide how and what we think, how and where we live, to whom we would chose to associate with, etc. It is a mental trap to allow those words to have meaning. For what it’s worth, the so called “Gay Pride” movement took the derisive terms for their sexual persuasion and used them to define themselves, thus removing the stigma attached to it.

In this day and age, simply to state you prefer your own and your own culture is to be labeled a bigot and a racist. Does anyone really think that it is an accident that all of our immigrants—both legal and illegal, are non-whites? Of course not. Once having sown the ground with the seeds of tolerance and abject denial of one’s own, there was, deliberately, little or no argument left for saying “no” to immigrants who were the “other”. Indeed, to point out the cultural disparities simply meant you were a dinosaur and hence the label “paleocon”.

First they attacked our neighborhood school system—thus destroying an integral part of our communities and way of life—parents knew one another through their children and their children’s activities, which all centered around the neighborhood schools and the pride and loyalty associated with that school. Then they took our sense of family from us by forcing mothers into the workforce. They have removed the “father” as the head of the family and made a joke of him, replacing him with “Big Brother” and a host of pseudo father figures who main purpose is to be sperm donors. Once they had “our” children for 8-10 hours per day, they took away our ability to inculcate them with our culture and history—instead teaching them they were bad and by extension, evil—“whiteness studies” is only the latest incarnation. Now we are being told we are not smart enough (even though it is “we” who invented the modern world and all of it’s technologies) to even hang on to our jobs. Now, for the last 15 years, they are taking away our sense of nationhood and telling us that we are “nationalists” and “xenophobes” for wanting to preserve it. In short, for 47 years, we have been called every name in the book—all designed to wear down our defenses and break our sense of a national self.

This is an ideological struggle, Lawrence, this is war. We must be able to laugh in the face of our enemies and let them know that while “sticks and stones may break our bones, names will never hurt us” as we refuse to let them define us and our culture. America has a culture. It was brought here by those whose children and grandchildren fought the war for independence and laid down the bedrock of our beliefs—The U.S. Constitution. They are, in fact, stealing all from us by the use of such words—those words then, must be made meaningless and useless.

LA replies:

Robert’s diatribe against liberalism, with which I agree, does not answer my point—that it is wrong to define ourselves as bigots and racists and act as though bigotry and racism are either (1) utterly meaningless concepts or (2) good things.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 13, 2007 08:57 PM | Send