Why materialists/Darwinists/HBD’ers cannot understand liberalism

I just came upon a brief 2008 entry which shows how crudely reductionist the status competition theory of liberalism really is. Of course status competition is a component of liberalism—as it is a component of most social phenomena. The problem is in reducing liberalism to nothing but status competition. I’m copying the entry here.

Regarding the post last evening, “Is white surrender a function of status competition among whites?” … in case readers thought I was being unfair when I said that Steve Sailer reduces the entire historical catastrophe of white racial guilt, white racial surrender, and the suicide of Western civilization to mere status competition, here is something Sailer said at Vdare in 2007:

In other words, White Guilt is just another ploy in the Great American White Status Struggle. Minorities are merely props for asserting moral superiority over other whites.

So, white guilt is “just another ploy.” The suicide of the white West is due to just, i.e., it is due to nothing more than (“nothing more than” or “nothing but” being the classic slogans of reductionism) an ego-centered “ploy” (and you can’t get more trivializing and reductionist than a “ploy”) being played by some whites on other whites over minorities, who are “merely” props in the whites’ mutual struggle for status.

Sailer’s reductionism makes him incapable of grasping civilizational issues.

Anyone who thinks that white guilt is nothing more than a function of status competition among whites ought to take a look at the previous entry. Isn’t it evident that Pippa Bacca, the 33 year old Italian airhead who hitchhiked alone through Turkey wearing a wedding dress in order to send a message of peace and tolerance and got murdered, was not doing it as part of some Saileresque status competition, but because she believed in peace and tolerance? But since reductionists such as Sailer don’t believe in anything beyond matter and natural selection, they not only do not believe in the good, they do not believe that human beings are motivated by their belief in the good (leaving aside how deluded and destructive that belief may be in particular cases). The reductionists and Darwinians are thus incapable of understanding what makes human beings do the things they do, ranging from building a civilization to committing racial and civilizational suicide.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 14, 2008 12:46 PM

- end of initial entry -

Greg J. writes:

Do you know if Steve Sailer is a Christian? I am not very familiar with him in that regard, at least not his HBD arguments, mostly I have only read his anti-immigration stuff. It is really depressing to keep on discovering that some of my favorite writers are atheists.

LA replies:

I believe he was raised Catholic. But he never introduces any religious references into his writings that I’m aware of.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 11, 2011 10:10 AM | Send