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Dreher’s latest epiphany
Rod Dreher has not stopped at saying that the Illegal Alien—meaning all illegal aliens, from the moment they step over the border—is the “Texan of the Year,” and thus that all illegal aliens, from the moment they step over the border, are Americans. Now he’s moving into Condoleezza Rice territory, where America prior to the Civil Rights movement was a basically rotten country. Actually he’s gone beyond Rice. He’s saying that prior to the Civil Rights movement America was a savage country. In his latest blog entry, he quotes a horrifying news story about the current murderous tribal violence in Kenya, in which Kenyans are chasing their neighbors and hacking them to death. Then he continues:
That, my friends, is human nature. It’s not just Africans. We know all too well about Germans and others who turned their Jewish neighbors in to the Nazis. I am old enough to have known white people—gentle, elderly white people—who wouldn’t have batted an eye at horrific violence done to their black neighbors. This is not all that people are, but it’s what’s at our instinctive core….
As the Kenyans are today, so the ancestors of us Americans, wherever we come from, were yesterday—even here, in this country. What was the civil rights struggle but an attempt by one “tribe,” a minority one, to overturn laws and customs by which the dominant “tribe” oppressed them? Don’t think we use violence in our politics? Ask Martin Luther King’s family. [Emphasis added.]
But having said this obscene thing, having said that white Americans of the past were the same as Kenyans hacking their neighbors to death, having said that “we,” meaning white Americans, are a “tribe” similar to an African tribe, and that “we” killed Martin Luther King, he then tries to cover himself:
Of course it’s absurd to compare the violence surrounding American politics in these past few decades with what nations like Kenya suffer.
But his denial is false. He was not just comparing “the violence surrounding American politics in these past few decades with what nations like Kenya suffer.” He was saying that Americans of the past were the same as Kenyans hacking their neighbors to death. And he has not retracted that statement.
He continues:
What I want to say, though, is that to the extent that we fight our political battles through speeches and caucuses and primaries, and we can all rely on the peaceful transfer of power, it’s because of the extremely hard and lengthy work of the civilizational process…. America was founded on the ideal that membership in the national “tribe” does not depend on accident of birth, but by sharing the national ideals, and that a man should not be judged by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.
When Dreher’s observations are considered in light of his recent gratuitous warning that we (meaning conservative immigration restrictionists) must not hate Mexicans and regard them as less than human, the implication emerges that without race-blind liberalism, we conservatives would be hacking Hispanics and blacks to death. Indeed, what Dreher is saying is that before the advent of modern race-blind liberalism, there was no civilization, there was only savage tribalism. But race-blind modern liberalism saves us from that:
we are a better country today than the country I was born into in 1967. I was born into a South which was just beginning to emerge from segregation; now, the United States might elect the son of an African immigrant as our next president! God bless America.
So he celebrates and hopes for the election of Obama, a supporter of open borders, a congregant in a church headed by a white-hating black pastor. Dreher’s message: the election of Obama will save us from the machete-wielding passions of white immigration restrictionists.
Dreher is not stupid. But Dreher is not led by thought and reason. Dreher is led by emotional epiphanies—epiphanies that are clearly leading him toward race-blind liberalism, and then, as the night follows the day, toward anti-white liberalism, since the only way to achieve race-blindness is to bring an end to America’s historic white majority.
Does anyone want to lay down a bet on when Dreher formally renounces his recent comment that he’s an immigration restrictionist hard-liner?
- end of initial entry -
Harry Horse writes:
“Does anyone want to lay down a bet on when Dreher formally renounces his recent comment that he’s an immigration restrictionist hard-liner?”
No, but I’d wager he has made a substantial portion of his audience uncomfortable with the display of his pathetic, liberal writhing.
Alas, this is not a mature mind, and heretofore he shouldn’t be taken seriously except by the masochist among us.
LA replies:
I don’t agree. If I had listened every time someone told me I should ignore something a writer has said because the writer is not to be taken seriously, I wouldn’t have written half of what I’ve written. By your logic, why not say that liberalism is not a mature philosophy, and therefore that we shouldn’t take liberalism seriously, and that anyone who does take it seriously is a masochist? Why not say that feminism is silly, and so we should ignore it? Why not say that PC is silly, and so we should ignore it? Why not say that multiculturalism is a ridiculous belief system, and so we should ignore it? What you miss is that liberalism, feminism, PC, multiculturalism, and the liberal-leaning meanderings of the Dreher types are determining the direction of our society.
Also, you don’t seem to be aware of the fact that Dreher is a respected cosnservative, that he’s a member in good standing of the conservative establishment, that his book on Crunchy Conservativism has been received well. So the fact that Dreher is indulging in what you describe as “pathetic, liberal writhing” is not insignificant.
Robert in Nashville writes:
I don’t think Mr. Dreher is saying that the civil rights movement eliminated all feeling of a common nation, based upon common race, ethnicity, religion, culture and history, only that the people’s ability to act to protect and preserve these interests have been overpowered and repressed—by force of the National Guard when necessary, in which case government violence is just fine to use, (Auster’s Rule of the unprincipled exception perhaps) as well as enforced by the courts, new laws amendments, etc.
If these ties still exist, only repressed now, then those of us who retain them, and our progeny are still savages. But if nationalism is savagery, the government must regard the nation of people itself, as a never ending enemy, against whom it can only hope to prevail by a sort of final solution of causing the disintegration of the nation or by repopulating the land with alien nations. [LA replies: That’s the clear tendency of Dreher’s argument.]
But then, as with his earlier story, Mr. Dreher probably doesn’t believe his essay here either. He just had to write it to keep his job. [LA replies: No, because this was written at Dreher’s own blog.]
George writes:
“Dreher is not stupid. But Dreher is not led by thought and reason. Dreher is led by emotional epiphanies—epiphanies that are clearly leading him toward race-blind liberalism, and then, as the night follows the day, toward anti-white liberalism, since the only way to achieve race-blindness is to bring an end to America’s historic white majority.”
I believe that Dreher’s reaction to the events in Kenya goes beyond a mere “epiphany.” I believe this proves that liberalism is not guided by any conscious master plan on the part of the left but instead operates on some level of madness. Dreher desires for the races to be equal in terms of ability and inherent nature. And yet the races are obviously unequal in terms of ability and nature as blacks are now proving in Kenya.
As liberals see racial egalitarianism break down when confronted by reality, the left progressively goes mad trying to convince themselves that they are not seeing what their own eyes and ears are telling them is an obvious, and irrefutable reality. They reject reality.
This explains why racial egalitarianism has gotten crazier in terms of policy and shriller in terms of rhetoric as time has gone on: As the left’s egalitarian policies fail, the more the cultural left lashes out at reality and their own people, and, ultimately, lash out against God who is the author of all reality.
One way God constructed the universe is through the concept of hierarchy—a concept the left despises and seeks to tear down because hierarchy puts people in positions of superiority. In the universe, God is superior to life, and among those life forms, some forms of life are superior in ability to other forms of life.
The white race is superior to the black race and other races in terms of civilizational ability and capacity. There is nothing inherently wrong with superiority.
Superiority in ability is natural, just as it is natural for some breeds of animals to be faster and smarter than other breeds of the same species. This is how God constructed the universe—around hierarchy and division of form and function.
The left rejects obedience and submission to God—who is superior to mankind—and seeks to make man’s will superior to God’s will by rewriting the rules that guide nature.
Dreher, and those like him, cannot accept the reality of race because to do so would shatter the phony, secular, moral universe they have constructed to make themselves feel good.
Dreher needs to grow up.
LA replies:
Very well said (with just one disagreement; see below).
Expanding on your comment, consider this, which I didn’t mention in the original entry. Two events occurred on the same day that set off Dreher’s epiphany: the historic emergence of the son of a Kenyan man as the front runner for the Democratic nomination, and the outbreak of murderous black savagery in Kenya. At the moment of America’s raising up the son of an African black to unprecedented prominence in our civilization, Dreher saw the primitive savagery of African blacks in full throttle. So how did Dreher handle the intense cognitive disjunction produced in his mind by these two events? By declaring that America historically is as savage as black Africa, and that it is only the kind of race-blind liberalism supposedly represented by Obama that can save America from its own savagery. In Dreher’s account the race-blind inclusion of blacks represents civilization, and traditional white-majority America represents savagery; and only through the admission of more and more blacks and other non-whites into our formerly white-majority society can our society’s inherent savagery be eliminated.
Condoleezza Rice performed the same mental operation with regard to Iraq. Faced with unending Iraqi terror and chaos where there was supposed to be democracy, she flipped the situation on its head and said that historically America was no better than Iraq, and that we still have a long way to go, and indeed that Iraq, because it now allows women to vote, is more advanced than 19th century America that didn’t allow women to vote. Therefore we have no right to be impatient about the slowness of progress in Iraq, or to imagine that it discredits the belief in Muslim democracy.
So George is absolutely right. In order to save their liberal lies that have been discredited by reality, the liberals must turn reality on its head.
* * *
There is just one point where I disagree with George. I personally avoid using the words “superior” and “inferior” when discussing race differences. I think they produce a notion that the superior ones are superior as humans to others. The “superior” ones then expand their ego and look down their nose at the “inferior” ones.” Suppose one person was better in math than another. Would we say the first was “superior” to the other in math? No, because that introduces a highly unpleasant personal comparison into the discussion and suggests that the first person has more human worth than the other. The same with race differences. The problem of race differences is difficult enough without white people talking about how they are “superior” to blacks. Also, using such language repels many people and allows liberals to call you a white supremacist. There are better and more accurate and less invidious ways of speaking of racial differences in civilizational ability.
Harry Horse replies:
I think you are misreading my comment. Obviously we shouldn’t discount liberalism, feminism, etc. My intent was, after reading the whole commentary narrative, it seems to me that Dreher has personal demons, and it would be polite (as traditionalists are apt to be) to offer him a period of therapeutic neglect, with the hopes of him, eventually, coming around. It is my opinion, their are certain points in the mind’s opinion-making process, that no amount of outside help will be of assistance. This is clearly the case, here and now, with Dreher.
I apologize if my earlier comment sounded too glib.
LA replies
Interesting. I see your point.
In fact, if you are correct, then my and others’ going after Dreher only makes the situation worse by stirring up his demons.
N. writes:
There is always a risk in trying to figure out what motivates another person, but in this case I think I’ll try. The fact that Rod Dreher was born in 1967 is not trivial for a number of reasons. The first and most glaring one is simple: he turned 40 last year, and that bothers people to a varying degree. Some shrug it off, some take it on the chin, some get depressed, and some develop strange new enthusiasms, some become much more emotional for a time. Perhaps part of what we are seeing in Mr. Dreher’s writing is an outgrowth of his “mid-life crisis.” [LA replies: I feel that an observation like this really trivializes the discussion. Everyone turns 40 at some point, you know?].
There is another more subtle aspect to his age. He never really saw “Jim Crow,” but very possibly believes he did. All of that “separate but equal” apparatus was removed in the mid 1960s, if nothing else by Federal decree. Dreher was 10 years old in 1977, the year of the Bakke decision on affirmative action, there is no logical way he could have seen any of the kind of racism that was endemic in the 1940s and 1950s, because it just was not there anymore by the time Jimmy Carter was sworn into office. [LA replies: But people don’t have to experience some historical event or condition personally to have a feel for it and its meaning. There is such a thing as the historical experience of a society that a person was born into. I didn’t personally experience World War II, but it surrounded me in my childhood, it was part of our culture, I had a feel for what it meant.]
However, I suspect that he wants to believe that he saw “Jim Crow,” just as Condoleeza Rice wants to believe she rode in the back of an Alabama public bus, because it is emotionally important to have participated in some way, however small, in the great Civil Rights Conflict. Dreher has bemoaned more than once the passing away of architecture, of simpler ways, of the good part of the past, and he’s a nostalgic fellow, why not be nostalgic for the Civil Rights era?
Dreher also seems to crave emotional experiences; witness his turn from Protestantism, which if I remember correctly he described as rather plain and uninteresting, to Roman Catholicism, and then to Eastern Orthodox; each change brought him to a fancier liturgy. Perhaps he still feels himself to be an outsider in some fashion, and thus emotionally obligated to defend others also perceived as “outsiders.” [LA replies: This is pure speculation relating to Rod Dreher’s personal motives.]
N. replies:
I do not wish to trivialize the discussion, but the physical and mental condition of a person matters. Robert E. Lee famously was suffering from an illness at Gettysburg, and so he did not plan that battle as well as others. If Dreher is morose in part because he’s turned 40, then that’s a factor to take into account in his writing. [LA replies: “IF” Dreher is morose? This is pure speculation, relating to someone’s personality. Why introduce it? How does it help the discussion one iota?] If he’s changed his denomination within Christendom because he never “feels at home,” that’s a factor as well. [Further rank speculation.]
You seem to have misread my observation about Dreher and “Jim Crow.” It is one thing to have a feel for an historical event, as you do about WW II, it is another to delude yourself into believing that you somehow participated in it. I’m sure you do not pretend that you were “there” on V.E. or V.J. day, but it surely seems to me that Dreher in some sense believes he really did see “Jim Crow,” with all the “coloreds only” drinking fountains and the rest of it. If that is true, then he has some serious mental issues and we must bear that in mind as well.
I hope this helps explain things.
LA replies:
I don’t see this. If Dreher feels that the society into which he was born and raised had been guilty of a historic sin against black people, what difference does it make whether he personally experienced it or only knows about it historically? It’s still part of the history of his society and he cares about it.
Furthermore, looking again at Dreher’s column, I don’t see any comment by him suggesting that he thinks he personally saw Jim Crow.
LA writes:
On further thought, I agree with the commenter who said that “epiphany” is not the right word to describe the changes Rod Dreher keeps going through. They seem more like emotional storms.
George writes:
I see what you mean when you say you would prefer I not use the word “superiority” when discussing race, if only because it turns people off people from a discussion. In future correspondence I will try and say “better at,” or some other description, when referring to a group’s skill level.
However, I just want to make clear to any reader who might have been confused by the meaning of what I wrote: when I referred to “superior abilities,” I was discussing race strictly in terms of ability and aspects of human skills and talents and not moral superiority.
Stephen R. writes:
George’s wonderful post expressed ideas that, a year ago, I would have viewed scornfully. I want to thank you for bringing me into the world of concreteness.
I do have a minor disagreement about your interpretation of:
“The United States might elect the son of an African immigrant as our next president! God bless America.”
I don’t believe that Dreher would actually celebrate the election of Barak Obama. Despite the epiphany, Dreher’s politics are still probably quite anti- left. The words prior to the quote only go as far as preparing us for his appreciation of realistic possibility that a man of Barak’s skin color be elected. I’m betting that for now, he’d still prefer someone more like Thomas Sowell.
Thanks again.
Stephen R.
N. writes:
I admit that I am speculating about some of the things that may motivate Rod Dreher. However, I am not the only one. I do not see any evidence in his column tying the rioting in Kenya to Obama, to pick one example.
We are all speculating to some extent or other.
LA replies:
Fair point, except that my speculation had to do with the actual content of the Dreher’s column. There was a significant amount of evidence to work with. N.’s speculation had to do with the way N. imagines Dreher felt about turning 40 sometime in the last year and about how Dreher feels about changing his religion. These are subjects about which N. has no information.
Terry Morris writes:
“Previous recipients included the city of Houston for its response to Hurricane Katrina and a former police officer whose two sons died in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as George W. Bush and Karl Rove.”
“None provoked a reaction on the scale of this year’s choice, Jones said.”
Jones expects that the previous choices should have provoked the same kind of response as the illegal alien recipient did? What’s wrong with people like this???
LA replies:
Well, there must be something REALLY WRONG with people then.
This reminds me of a sentence I hear regularly in my life, when dealing with officialdom: “Nobody’s ever complained about that before.” Meaning that there’s something wrong with ME for making the complaint. And that’s what Rodg baby is saying: “Hey, no one’s ever complained about the TOY before, so there must be SOMETHING WRONG with the readers who are complaining about this one.”
These journalists are so thickly buffered that no reality can get through to them.
Laura W. writes:
Notice how Keven Ann Willey, the editorial page editor, uses perfect corporate-speak to describe the outrage. She calls it “pushback.” Ah, for the days when journalists didn’t go to fancy management schools!
I remember a legendary city editor sitting at the daily news meeting at the paper where I worked. His boss turned to him and asked, “So, what d’ya have for the front page tomorrow?”
The editor took a drag of his cigarette and replied, “Utter contempt.”
LA replies:
Yes, and with concepts and buzzwords like “pushback” in place, they don’t have to consider WHY their readers are actually angry and WHAT they are actually saying. It’s automatically dismissed as “pushback” or as some other non-rational response. So they don’t have to consider that there maybe there is something objectively objectionable about calling all illegal aliens “Texans.” Even Dreher, who is not in management, never acknowledged through the whole debate that there are reasonable grounds for people to be very angry about the TOY essay.
And you’re right. One can’t imagine someone speaking like that old-time editor today.
Laura replies:
A corporate mentality is okay for the publisher. It destroys the journalist’s soul and puts him in his own cocoon. There he sleeps, blissfully unaware of the outside world.
LA writes:
I wrote above that “epiphany” was not the correct word for what I was talking about.
Wikipedia gives this excellent definition of the secular meaning of epiphany:
the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something. The term is used in either a philosophical or literal sense to signify that the claimant has “found the last piece of the puzzle and now sees the whole picture,” or has new information or experience, often insignificant by itself, that illuminates a deeper or numinous foundational frame of reference.
When Dreher wrote, “As the Kenyans are today, so the ancestors of us Americans, wherever we come from, were yesterday—even here, in this country,” meaning that the ancestors of white Americans, both in America and elsewhere, were the equivalent of Kenyans roaming through a town with machetes, chasing down their neighbors and hacking them to death, Dreher was not having a sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something. He was being led by emotion that was the opposite of comprehension and true insight, an emotion that was compelling him to portray white people in the worst possible light, as savages.
The secular meaning of epiphany discussed above, as the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something, originates, I believe, with James Joyce, or at least he popularized it. I use the word in that sense all the time, for example, my 2000 article “My Bush Epiphany.” But maybe the secular and literary usage of the word has gotten out of hand, obscuring its original, religious meaning. Today being the Feast of the Epiphany, it’s a good time to remember that.
Epiphany is a synonym of theophany, which means “an appearance of a God to man, or a divine disclosure,” and, in Christianity, “an unambiguous manifestation of God, to man, where ‘unambiguous’ indicates that the seers or seer are of no doubt that it is God revealing himself to them.”
In its article on the Christian Feast of the Epiphany, Wikipedia writes:
Epiphany is celebrated by both the Eastern and Western Churches, but a major difference between them is over precisely which historical events the feast commemorates. For Western Christians the feast primarily commemorates the coming of the Magi, while in the East the feast celebrates the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan. However, in both cases the essence of the feast is the same: the manifestation of Christ to the world (whether as an infant or in the Jordan), and the Mystery of the Incarnation.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 05, 2008 12:48 PM | Send
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