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I’ve got a million fans
A commenter writes at Steve Sailer’s blog:
I personally am a big fan of Larry Auster and View From the Right. That being said, his constant writing about black on white crime strikes me as a little creepy.
The title of this entry is a paraphrase of the line, “I’ve got a million friends,” in Bob Dylan’s 1964 song, “I Shall Be Free, No. 10”:
Now I’ve got a friend who spends his life
Stabbing my picture with a bowie-knife
Dreams of strangling me with his scarf
When my name comes up he pretends to barf.
I’ve got a million friends!
- end of initial entry -
James P. writes:
“I personally am a big fan of Larry Auster and View From the right. That being said, his constant writing about black on white crime strikes me as a little creepy.”
The media’s refusal to report honestly on constant black-on-white crime strikes me as more than a little creepy. After all, why should Larry Auster have to do their job for them?
A society that tolerates constant black-on-white crime strikes me as more than a little creepy. The liberal failure to eradicate such crime amounts to a form of state terror against its white citizens.
Karl D. writes:
In regards to the guy who finds these types of stories “Creepy.” He also goes on to say:
Fewer than two thousand whites a year are murdered by blacks, but more than ten thousand whites a year are killed by white drunk drivers. I as a white person am more than 5 times more likely to be killed by the drunk drivers, and yet Larry just can’t stop harping on the something that is really a comparatively small threat to my life.
His murder statistics may be correct, but I find those numbers to be pretty low. But even if true, he is very limited in his scope of crimes that may bring him or his loved one’s harm. If murder was the ONLY crime whites had to worry about at the hands of blacks then he might well feel more comfortable. But what about the rapes, assaults, robberies, carjackings, attempted murders, and just plain old menacing and bad behavior? Let us not forget the countless victims’ lives that have been altered physically, mentally and economically as a result of these crimes? And what about all the innocent black victims themselves? Thank you again Liberalism.
To make matters worse. Liberalism not only allows these criminal’s to survive, but thrive. Let me give you an example. There is a show on TV I particularly like called “Trauma: Life in the ER” which films a typical day in a real emergency room. What I find particularly staggering is that no matter what city the hospital is in, the high priority patient’s are almost invariably the same (Black and Hispanic) and in for the same thing (gunshot or knife wounds). And often they have been there many times before for previous gunshot wounds! I always would joke around with friends that no matter how many times a gang banger got shot he would always manage to somehow survive. At first I chalked it up to luck. But no more. These hospitals, staff and paramedics are just THAT GOOD. And these gang bangers know it! Being shot to them is like breaking a bone to you or me. A painful inconvenience. These hospitals are so good at being level one trauma units (akin to battlefield hospitals) that doctors the world over come here to train! And you just know that none of these guys is ever going to pay a hospital bill ever. The families reaction upon visiting is usually twofold. They either show up in great numbers and act hysterical and disrupt the hospital, or only a few show up and could actually care less if the patient lives or die’s. The other black and Hispanic patients are usually drunks or drug addicts, or people who act surprised that they have to lose a foot due to Diabetes. They will often curse the doctor out even though he warned them before about their eating and drinking habits. The whites are usually victims of car or work accidents, drunk driving and poor health choices. In my perfect world, known gang bangers would only be worked on by medical students under supervision. And I would create a medical debtors prison sentence for these types as well. Ironically Obamacare would probably lead to many of these thugs dropping dead which undoubtedly would be racist. Another fascinating show is called “The first 48 hours” on the A&E channel. It follows homicide detectives from the initial crime scene until they conclude the case. Hopefully with a full confession which they usually get because the criminals are so sloppy and just downright stupid. Once again the criminals are virtually almost all black as are the victims.
LA replies:
Another aspect of the Sailer commenter’s statistical approach to racial murder is that it is divorced from the meaning of black on white murder. Given that he is (probably) a Darwinist materialist, the only thing that matters to him is overall rates of survival and reproduction. Therefore a white person being killed in a car accident has the same meaning to him as Anne Pressly being beaten to death in her bedroom by a black intruder. This is another example of how the Darwinian/HBD approach is anti-human; by reducing everything to materiality seen through the light of statistics, it denies human meaning.
Josh F. writes:
“Creepy” is now an established weapon in the female autonomist’s lexicon. It is used most frequently as a method to decimate the esteem of the beta-male in one on one encounters. The word literally does what is says, it creeps. The insult is not meant to just paralyze the intended victim, but to freeze one out from all those that have “witnessed” one’s “creepiness.” It also expresses what you have discussed again and again. Female autonomists becoming less and less aware of the real creeps among them and more and more in tuned with creeping out normal men.
LA replies:
I forget what you mean by female autonomist, but your analysis of the word “creepy” is correct. The critic using such a word about a writer is not just saying that he finds writer’s statements wrong, wrong-headed, or even bigoted; he’s saying that there’s something disgusting and repellent about the person; he should not be part of normal society. That’s bad enough. But when the critic describing a writer as “creepy” has just identified himself as a “big fan” of that writer, then you’re dealing with an almost pathological level of insincerity.
And this is a pattern that constantly recurs. So often people on right-wing Web discussions will say, “Oh, Auster, he’s terrific.” and then they immediately proceed, not just to disagree with me or criticize me, but to speak of me in a derogatory fashion intended to harm me in other people’s eyes. In a November 25 entry at Dennis Mangan’s site (which I noticed last night after the site was mysteriously returned to the Web after being disappeared for five days, Mangan, who professes to respect me and read me every day notwithstanding our disagreements, posted an entry, entitled “Seeing Through All the Lies,” which began with a comment by Conservative Swede in which Swede included me in a list of the
things important to see through nowadays, such as … AGW, fiat money, Auster, etc., etc….
[O]nce someone (like you or me) have seen the pattern of how we have been fed with lies since we were born, it is easier for us to unfold more and more of the lies.
So Dennis Mangan approvingly and prominently quoted, under the rubric “Seeing Through All the Lies,” this statement portraying me as part of the lying leftist establishment that has to be exposed, equating me with, among other things, a major target of conservative opprobrium, fiat money, and with one of the biggest leftist propaganda lies of all time, anthropogenic global warming. In alliance with Swede, he puts my name on the conservatives’ “Most Wanted” list, even as he professes his respect for me.
Shrewsbury writes:
I like that semi-anti-Austerian comment at Sailer’s blog, “Fewer than two thousand whites a year are murdered by blacks.” What if 2,000 blacks were lynched by white people every year? Do we think that that might get a little play in the media? Yes, I think so. Well, at this point in the Marxoid takeover of the West it’s a little dreary to still spend one’s time pointing out such double standards, which after all are the very meat and bones of the whole endeavor, but it is still useful to show how far the poison of liberalism has seeped even into conservative minds, to such an extent that this conservative is capable of writing, “[ho hum]…fewer than two thousand whites a year are murdered by blacks.” Only six whites per day, every day, murdered for being white! That’s probably much worse than your average actual pogrom or intifada, but hey, nobody’s reporting it, so what the hell. Let the blood flow, we don’t want to be creepy and notice it or anything.
Josh F. replies to LA:
A radical autonomist is one who has taken liberalism to its logical extreme. The radical autonomist manifests certain behaviors that show him in conflict with true/false, right/wrong, and good/evil. In attempting to discard the restraints of God and exist in a radically autonomist state, the radical autonomist must embrace the false, the wrong, and the evil. So a love/hate relationship is evidence of this true/false dichotomy. Mangan loves your truth, but hates the fact that he is limited by it. And this is in line with his atheistic conservatism. He “loves” truth, but hates Truth’s “limitations.”
Ketze writes:
“This is another example of how the Darwinian/HBD approach is anti-human; by reducing everything to materiality seen through the light of statistics, it denies human meaning.”
Evolutionary biology (or “Darwinism” if you prefer) neither denies nor embraces “human meaning.” It explains the diversity of life on Earth. It doesn’t tell us how to live.
I am a Darwinist, and I can tell you right off that it simply is not true that “the only thing that matters” to me is overall rates of survival and reproduction. Your claim above to the contrary is nothing more than a slur.
I agree with you most of the time, but you have a real blind spot on evolution.
LA replies:
You wrote:
Evolutionary biology (or “Darwinism” if you prefer) neither denies nor embraces “human meaning.” It explains the diversity of life on Earth. It doesn’t tell us how to live.
You’re participating in a good cop bad cop routine. Some Darwinists most certainly DO claim that Darwinism supplies ALL THE MEANING WE NEED TO HAVE. Consider one of the leading Darwinists, EO Wilson. In his book Consilience he says Darwinism is nothing less than an all encompassing system of knowledge giving us guidance both to how to live and the meaning of it all.
But then when a troublesome blogger like me comes along and says that Darwinism’s “meaning” is no meaning, you reply that Darwinism doesn’t claim to offer meaning, and therefore I am blind and don’t know what I’m talking about.
See? Whether you realize it or not, you’re playing a good cop / bad cop routine with Wilson. The purpose of the routine is to prevent people like me for calling Darwinism out on what it really is.
You wrote:
but you have a real blind spot on evolution.
That’s not an argument. Just saying to someone, “You have a blind spot,” personalizes the issue while failing to contribute anything to the discussion. If I have a blind spot, show that I have a blind spot. Don’t just assert it.
December 6
Ketze replies:
The good cop bad cop routine is a deception employed by investigators to manipulate truth from uncooperative witnesses and suspects. To claim that I am somehow participating in such a routine implies that you think I am not speaking in earnest. Were we discussing this issue face to face, you would see that I am not running a deception and I doubt that you would make such an accusation.
I am sincere in my understanding of evolutionary biology (or, just for the sake, perhaps my misunderstanding).
I’ve seen Wilson on Charlie Rose discuss Darwin, and I’ve read his books On Human Nature and Sociobiology but did not walk away with the impression of Wilson that you have. If he says what you say, then presumably it would appear in his Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.
Just because some philosopher uses Darwin as his starting point does mean that evolutionary biology itself speaks to the question ultimate human meaning. Wilson, Watson, Hitchens, Dawkins, and Dennett see evolution as supporting atheism; Francis Collins and Ken Miller certainly do not.
Where did you read Wilson’s claim that Darwinism supplies all the meaning we need?
LA replies:
I did not mean to say that you were participating in such a thing deliberately. I am sorry for creating that impression. However, as I always say, when it comes to political positions, a person’s private intention is not the issue. Political positions objectively exist. A person who publicly adopts the liberal position is a liberal who is advancing liberalism in the world, regardless of how he sees himself. Similarly, the Darwinian good cop bad cop routine, meaning the presentation of two different and contradictory arguments about Darwinism by its followers, exists. Some Darwinians present one argument, and others present the other, and the effect is to confuse and disarm critics, even if that is not the intention of the people making that argument.
As for whether Wilson proposes Darwinian science as a religion that supplies ethical meaning in life, here is the beginning of an entry at VFR last May called “Science as the new religion”:
In the initial entry on the announcement of the “missing link” earlier this week, I commented:
Note … the inappropriate emotionalism and enthusiasm of these supposed scientists when expressing their feelings about evolution, giving away that Darwinism is not for them a search for scientific truth, but a means of emotional fulfillment, indeed a religion.
This religion is not just a vague, inarticulate tendency shared by various individuals. It was specifically described and proposed by biologist E.O. Wilson in his 1998 essay, “The Biological Basis of Morality,” quoted below. (The same text, with slight modifications, is found on pp. 264-265 of Wilson’s 1998 book Consilience.) Wilson envisions the replacement of ever more discredited religion by ever more complete and elegant science, and the instauration of a new religion and ethical code based solely on biological knowledge.
As wild as that sounds, Wilson’s ambitions don’t stop at making Darwinian evolution the organizing truth of the universe and even the source of ethics. He recognizes that man needs a “transcendentalist belief,” a “sacred narrative” to touch his inmost feelings, and he thinks that knowledge of science, particularly of evolution, can provide it. “The true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry,” he writes, “is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic. Material reality discovered by science already possesses more content and grandeur than all religious cosmologies combined.” [Italics added.] Wilson literally wants to turn the story of biological evolution into a scripture, one that will provide the same emotional experiences of connectedness and meaning that traditional religion provides. In Wilson’s secular religion, moreover, the “single gene pool” of humanity becomes our ultimate god, from which we as individuals emerge, and into which we are dissolved, like the Hindu Oversoul, the source and destiny of all things.
In the rest of that entry, I quote Wilson at length.
Richard Dawkins also sees Darwinism as a source of quasi transcendent meaning. So that’s the two most prominent names associated with Darwinian evolution, and they both speak of evolution in religious or near-religious terms.
Kezte writes:
Thanks. Consilience has been on my reading list for a while.
If you define “Darwinism” to include the philosophical musings of evolutionary biologists, then you are right.
LA replies: Touche.
Seriously, they do have an evolving world view, making more and more ambitious claims to being the answer to everything, not just natural knowledge, but knowledge of man, ethics, society, everything.
If “Darwinism” (a term I never use but seems to be favored by those who reject evolution) is used interchangeably with “theory of evolution,” then my original position stands.
LA: It’s not just Darwin critics who use it. For example evolutionist Jerry Coyne in his book occasionally uses it. I’ve seen others use it as well.
The theory of evolution does not deny “human meaning” or tell us how to live, just as the germ theory of disease does not tell us whether we should or should not visit gay bath houses.
Theories explain how the real world works. Humans attach meaning.
Nature doesn’t care about us. Maybe God does, but nature sure doesn’t.
LA: I fundamentally disagree with the statement that the theory of evolution does not deny human meaning. The theory of evolution, understood correctly and consistently, without making convenient exceptions to escape from its rigorous consequences, is radically incompatible with human meaning, human reason, human moral conscience, even human consciousness itself. If all of life with all its features and capabilities really came into existence the way Darwinism says it did, as the result of random genetic accidents that were naturally selected because they survived better than other random genetic accidents, then human consciousness and moral conscience could not exist. Top evolutionists such as Wilson and Coyne have plainly admitted that evolutionary science has ZERO idea how consciousness and moral concience evolved. I go further and say that the Darwinian theory of evolution is inherently incompatible with human consciousness and moral conscience.
I’ve written several entries on this theme.
See: Anti-Darwinism: a collection
LA adds:
By the way, how did this thread get into Darwinism?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 04, 2009 11:07 AM | Send
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