A liberal speaks

Ed L. writes:

I’ve been discussing Obama, immigration, and so forth with a colleague. I presented my VFR-like views on the subjects, and below is his reply. I thought that you and readers might find it amusing.

Dear Ed,

I really wonder how many blacks and whites really hate each other in the way you see American society. Of course there is a reality behind the stereotypes that we both make of each other, for the white fat cat and the black punk certainly exist. Moslem terrorists exist too, as do moles and fifth columnists. But I’m dumbfounded at your suggestion that we should round up all my Moslem students and deport them from America—especially since many of them just happen to be native born American citizens. I certainly agree that permanently black and permanently white communities cannot exist forever in American or anyplace else. That’s why I think that Obama’s parents represent the only real solution. When two societies collide they either marry into each other or exterminate each other. I’d be happy to give up blondes for a future mixed race America, just as I’d be happy to give up Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism for a rationally materialistic state. It won’t happen in our lifetimes, but it’s the dream of all progressives.

In the meantime I don’t feel any guilt about being white. If anything I despise the anti-intellectual bias of my fellow Americans that has lead them to turn their backs on their own culture to embrace the gutter of popular entertainment. All land in the world is held by right of conquest, and all successful societies exist through exploitation. If we whites have anything to be ashamed of, it’s a shame we can share with the rest of humanity.

So I really find myself rejecting your world view as one based upon hatred, suspicion, and revenge. I’d rather be blown up by a terrorist than spend the rest of my life in a gated, fascist community.

LA replies:

There are many things to comment on, but here’s just one.

As I’ve been saying for many years, liberals claim to believe in non-discrimination and diversity. They say that all people can get along and that only a bigot believes otherwise. But when it turns out that this is not true, the liberals don’t admit that they were wrong. Instead they say that the only solution is for all peoples on earth to intermarry, so that all human beings become one, undifferentiated race.

Let’s leave aside the practical impossibility of doing this, short of a global totalitarian state managing intermarriages for all of humanity for several generations until everyone becomes one race. Let’s just focus on what the liberals are admitting about liberalism.

THE LIBERALS SAID that all kinds of people can get along, and on that basis they said that we had to have open borders, mandated integration, minority preferences, the equalization of the condition of all groups, and systematic non-discrimination (of the majority toward the minorities) as the ruling basis of society.

Now they are admitting that none of that works.

FULL STOP. DO NOT LET THEM PROCEED FURTHER.

They have said that people of different races living in large numbers in the same society cannot get along together on a basis of equality, and, in fact, that they will kill each other. They have admitted that tolerance and non-discrimination cannot overcome racial and other group differences. THEREFORE THEY HAVE JUST ADMITTED THAT THE WHOLE LIBERAL IDEOLOGY IS WRONG. Therefore non-discriminatory open-borders immigration is wrong, because it increases the very diversity that the liberals have admitted causes insoluble problems. Therefore maintaining historically recognizable, ethnically distinct nations is correct.

Now, the liberals may come back and say:

“The aim of liberalism is one united and equal human race. If we can’t achieve that goal through diversity, we’ll attain it through eliminating diversity. So we haven’t changed our principles at all, just our means.”

In response, we have to say to them:

“We are not going to let you pull this cosmic bait and switch on us. We accepted open borders and liberal diversity because of your assurance that tolerance is the only moral and viable organizing principle of society. Now you’re saying that tolerance is not a viable and moral organizing principle for society, because different peoples, far from tolerating each other, will kill each other. If different people living in the same society must kill each other, and if the only way to eliminate differences is through a global totalitarian regime controlling the breeding of all human beings on earth for 10 generations, then the only sane, humane, civilized approach to the problem of human differences is to accept human differences. The solution is to follow God’s idea in the story of the Tower of Babel, which was to distribute mankind over the whole earth, living in different nations and different cultures, rather than trying to create a single, unified humanity.”

James P. writes:

Ed’s friend says:

“I really wonder how many blacks and whites really hate each other in the way you see American society.”

Is this real hate, or liberal “hate,” defined as “deviance from liberal race dogma”? I bet a lot of whites deviate from liberal race dogma, mentally anyway, but don’t dare express it. Blacks, of course, don’t have to worry about deviating from the liberal dogma, because this dogma defines only white thoughts and actions as racist, not black. As for real hate, I don’t see much white hate, and certainly a lot more black hate than white. Partly this is because our institutions tolerate and even encourage black hate. Real hate is permissible for blacks (and actually happens), not for whites (but still sometimes happens).

“When two societies collide they either marry into each other or exterminate each other. I’d be happy to give up blondes for a future mixed race America,”

So what if the blondes don’t want to give up and go away? That doesn’t matter?

Ed’s friend seems to propose that whites and non-whites must intermarry or they’re going to kill each other. But if whites and non-whites truly hate each other so much that they will end up trying to exterminate each other, it hardly seems possible that they would consent to forcible intermarriage (which is the only way Ed’s “progressive dream” can happen). Indeed, if anything is likely to provoke all out race war, it is an effort to force them to intermarry. [LA replies: Yes, it’s incredible: the only options he offers is that they mass kill each other, or mass marry each other.]

It is also baffling to me why Ed finds it morally acceptable for the state to force people to marry only from another race, but morally totally unacceptable for the state to require all (or a large number) of the people of a given race to not to enter. What is more intrusive, telling me who I can and cannot marry, or telling me I’m not allowed to move to your country?

“I’d rather be blown up by a terrorist than spend the rest of my life in a gated, fascist community.”

As you (Auster) say, once he admits that different races cannot get along—and he does—then he must inexorably admit that immigration should be halted. His feeble assertion that any alternative to his “progressive dream” is tantamount to fascism, and he’d rather die than give it up, is simply a confession of intellectual defeat.

Peter G. writes:

After reading the comments by Ed’s liberal pal, fantasy addict sums it up. All addictions are defined by dependence on a mood altering substance, for liberals it’s their intellectual matrix consisting of two constructs, an inplacable hostility to history and a morbid preoccupation with the future.

Inequality and discrimination (standards and presumption) are never perceived by liberals as defensive, instinctive traits necessary through history for human survival. Notice the scary detachment in that commentary. As though our ancestors had any choice about the world they found themselves in. Instead of a humble acknowledgement of the limitations those in the present have always faced, we get treated to a failure of intellect resembling your typical wild eyed drunken diatribe.

The talk of being murdered, for the sake of the world not being what you want it to be is craven escapism. So contemptable a notion, to surrender your life and the future for nothing other than your current displeasure at the universe not doing what you want it to, speaks volumes to the fantasy induced suicidal climax liberal extremism inevitably brings on.

This why you’ll never see a large demographic shift to traditional thinking, there’s no high in it.

Paul Nachman writes:

What Ed L.’s friend wrote is quite a mixed bag. Isn’t it self-contradictory? I wouldn’t expect a liberal to write this:

In the meantime I don’t feel any guilt about being white. If anything I despise the anti-intellectual bias of my fellow Americans that has lead them to turn their backs on their own culture to embrace the gutter of popular entertainment. All land in the world is held by right of conquest, and all successful societies exist through exploitation. If we whites have anything to be ashamed of, it’s a shame we can share with the rest of humanity.

But he did. This is a clear-seeing paragraph.

And he clearly recognizes that ethnic or racial diversity yields strife. Maybe Ed L. should go back to his friend and point out the mixture of realism and non sequiturs (such as the final paragraph).

LA replies:

My feeling is that that is a typical exception that I’ve often seen certain kinds of liberals make. He throws in these “realistic,” “tough” attitudes and feelings that seem to be pro-nation, but they’re not backed by any principle. Thus after saying that whites should support their own culture, he says:

“All land in the world is held by right of conquest, and all successful societies exist through exploitation.”

That’s not the statement of someone who believes in his own society, or who would defend it, once it came under sustained attack. Since he believes only in the right of conquest, he would figure that the attackers have more vigor and he ought to go over to their side.

Of course, every society that exists, exists on the basis of a monopoly of force in a given territory. But he seems to be going beyond that and suggesting an entirely amoral basis for society. “It’s ours, because we took it, and we own it.” What he’s really saying is that all societies are founded in crime. That’s what he means when he says:

“If we whites have anything to be ashamed of, it’s a shame we can share with the rest of humanity.”

He supports our society, but only as an assertion of amoral will. Try to imagine Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Harding, Coolidge, F.D. Roosevelt, speaking this way about America.

Paul Nachman replies:

Others, such as you, will give it a closer reading than I. What I kept thinking throughout was “Who’s supposed to kill the apostates?” Freelance individual Muslims, “practicing their religion freely”? Or the (inevitably) sharia state?

And if there truly is separation of religion and state—individual conscience—how could the apostates be killed? It wouldn’t be allowed. And therefore, how could devote Muslims, in fact, freely practice their religion?

LA replies:

Exactly. You have thrown his argument back at him with a twist.

For a devout Muslim, freedom is living under the complete rule of sharia. If apostates are not killed, that, for a devout Muslim, is a non-Islamic condition that disturbs true Islam and thus takes away true freedom. If, even worse, everyone in the society is free to do as he likes, society would cease to be Islamic and the devout Muslim would be utterly deprived of the freedom to live a truly Islamic life. For the devout Muslim to be free to live an Islamic life, the Islamic community must have the coercive power to keep the society Islamic. And that means an Islamic state. QED.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 17, 2008 08:47 PM | Send