Whites Never Invented Anything?

 

Joy Reid has recently claimed online that white people never invent anything. 

This is obviously wrong in terms of engineering or science. Does she mean culture?

No, still obviously wrong: Beethoven, Da Vinci, Shakespeare—which one was black? Andy Warhol?

Perhaps she is thinking only about pop culture? It is true that pop culture has always been a pathway to success for minorities and the poor—since it relies, more than other fields, on pure merit, on talent. 

But here too, it is not clear that non-whites have made the bigger mark. Not in comic books, or advertising, or popular literature, or comedy, or film. Here, it is the Jews who stand out.

But perhaps in popular music, at least? Reid cites rock and roll.

The one striking contribution by blacks to American culture is the sense of spontaneity in music. Contrast jazz with classical music, with its emphasis on practice and precision. This is where American music, and American culture, most obviously differs from European, and it is reasonable to assume this is from African influence.

I suspect this is what Reid is thinking of, and she is wrongly conflating “spontaneity” with “creativity.”

Beyond music, this spontaneity has also spread into other aspects of American culture—into Beat poetry in the fifties, for example. Although the Beat poets were almost all white.

For rock and roll, Reid has a case. Although sometime credited to country music through “roackabilly,” I too think rock and roll emerges mostly from gospel music: Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The idea of spontaneity in art seems to emerge naturally from the idea of spontaneity in worship—letting the spirit move you. 

That said, this spontaneous style of worship did not begin in black congregations. It flows from the theology of various “white” Protestant denominations emerging first in Europe, like the Quakers, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Pentecostals.  Emotional, spontaneous worship is particularly characteristic of many Scots-Irish congregations in the Appalachians—like the snake-handlers. In which direction did the influence really run?

Many of the early Gospel composers were white.

Speaking of the Appalachians, Scots and Irish musical traditions are at least as strong in the American vernacular as anything that can be traced to Africa. Country music, bluegrass, tap dancing, folk music, are all easily identifiable as Irish and Scottish in origin. 

These all no doubt mixed in with black congregations, and black traditions, in the local area--in the South.

And the people mixed too. 

Over one third of African-Americans have Irish ancestry. Beyonce, Billie Holiday, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Rhiannon Giddens, may identify as “African American,” but they certainly have Irish ancestors as well, and much of their musicality and musical heritage may come from that line.

The spontaneity goes with the Protestant heritage of the United States, and the fact that it is, uniquely, a classless society. And it is deceptive and divisive to speak of “black culture” as opposed to American culture.

It's Good to Be BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and Female

 Hollywood and advertising are not the only art forms that have lost their audience through DEI. The poetry world is probably worse, as a Vancouver poet has recently demonstrated.

The result, predictably, has been poetry nobody wants to read.

That Woman in Minnesota

 

A woman was lately videoed admitting she called a child “the n-word” at a Minesota playground. For what it is worth, she claims it was because she caught him rifling through her child’s diaper bag. She was doxxed online. The local police opened an investigation. The NAACP opened a GoFundMe and raised $340,000 for the black child and his family. 

Rather than apologize, the woman opened a GiveSendGo and appealed for donations to help her and her family relocate to safety. She has raised, at this report, $750,000.

The situation is insane, and a measure of how bad racial tensions have become in the US. Let’s try to restore some perspective.

“The n-word” is not inherently an insult. It is an insult only because we have arbitrarily decided so. It simply means the colour “black” in French or Spanish, a bit distorted by an English tongue. If it is an insult, this implies that there is something gravely wrong with having dark skin. Do we want to concede this?

Further, those of African ancestry commonly use “the n-word” among themselves, to refer to themselves. To say that a given act is fine for one racial group, but wrong for another, is an obvious example of racial discrimination. This should not be acceptable.

It is also now wrong to refer to East Asians as “yellow,” or to Native Americans as ‘redskins”—if apparently much less so—but there is nothing wrong with referring to anyone with fair skin as “white.” This again is obviously discriminatory. If it is wrong to refer to someone by their skin colour, it is wrong for everyone, or you are a racist.

Finally, free speech is free speech. Even granted that this was legitimately an insult—surely in this case an insult was intended—anything more than a verbal punishment, as was administered immediately on site without video being required—is clearly disproportionate.

All the tumult is madness. But at least let’s hope that the fact that the woman actually seems to have profited in the end for her small transgression, rather than having her life ruined, as intended, may go some distance in restoring balance.

The Dispossessed of Gaza--and Canada

 

Mahmoud Darwish

In a poetry group, as a prompt, one member quoted a poem by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, which ends:

You stole my forefathers' vineyards
    And land I used to till,
    I and all my children,
    And you left us and all my grandchildren
    Nothing but these rocks.
    Will your government be taking them too
    As is being said?
So!
    Put it on record at the top of page one:
    I don't hate people,
    I trespass on no one's property.
And yet, if I were to become hungry
    I shall eat the flesh of my usurper.
    Beware, beware of my hunger
    And of my anger!

To which I responded, before submitting a poem: 

Being dispossessed of one’s livelihood and land is a rather common human experience. It is especially common among those who have populated Canada. We are, in Cohen’s phrase, “Beautiful Losers.” The Acadians were expelled from their lands in Tantramar, in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The Huron were expelled from their lands by the Iroquois, and found refuge in Quebec. Then the Iroquois were expelled from their lands by the Americans, and sought refuge in Ontario. The UE Loyalists were expelled from their lands and possessions in the 13 colonies, and landed mostly penniless and without shelter in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec. The Irish, my own ancestors, were expelled from their lands: “to Hell or Connaught!” Many did not survive the passage; many died on the docks. The Scots were expelled from their lands in the Highland Clearances, so that today there is more Scots Gaelic spoken in Cape Breton than in Scotland. The many Jews came here from Eastern Europe to escape pogrom; they risked loss of life as well as property. After the Second World War, there was a great influx to Canada of what were then called “displaced persons” from the shifting boundaries and regimes from that war.

Many of us have, at some time in our lives, lost everything. Many of us can thank God there is a new life here in Canada. This was a common vision of our founders: of Louis Riel, of Wilfrid Laurier, of John A. Macdonald, of Guy Carleton. “A home for all the world’s peoples.” A home for the homeless—for, notably, English orphans, the “home children.”

The sine qua non was to be prepared to start again. Gregory Clark suggested there should be a monument erected on Grosse Ile, outside Quebec City, with the legend “Leave all your hates behind. Bring us only your loves.”

This was of course a dig at the Palestinians. Their grievance is the creation of the state of Israel. That happened in 1948: 77 years ago. Longer than a human lifetime, in that part of the world. Few living Palestinians have been dispossessed; yet as a group they have not moved on. Surely by now they bear some responsibility for their state?

This is not to address the Israeli claim that no Arabs were actually dispossessed by the creation of Israel; that it was their choice to leave. Twenty percent of the Israeli population is still Arab.

The guy who posted the original poem did not take this disagreement well. He declared me a racist and an imperialist because, in my list of the dispossessed in Canada, I did not mention the Canadian indigenous people dispossessed by settlers.

Which is ironic. The indigenous people are arguably the only group in Canada who have not been dispossessed of their land or forced to move. That is what “indigenous” means. 

Were their lands stolen? What lands? 89% of Canada is still crown land. By treaty they are free to roam and hunt and scavenge all over it, just as their ancestors always did.

As for the other eleven percent, they sold it and were compensated for it. It was not seized.

But the poet of the Palestinian prompt did not wait around to hear this. He had already quit the group, because in conscience he could not be in the same poetry group with a racist.

The Most Unkindest Cut

 

Immortal dead white man

News is that the Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust is planning to “de-colonize” Stratford. Apparently “the idea of Shakespeare's 'universal' genius 'benefits the ideology of white European supremacy'.” The Trust must “stop saying Shakespeare was the 'greatest' but part of a community of 'equal and different' writers globally.” Some exhibits will, for example, celebrate Rabindranath Tagore.

Questioned on how Shakespeare promoted “white European supremacy,” one authority issued this challenge: everyone around the world knows Shakespeare. But how many African writers could you name?

There you are. To suggest that Shakespeare is some unique genius promotes white supremacy. Obviously there must have been equally great writers in Africa.

By this logic, however, surely celebrating Shakespeare promotes Stratford supremacy as well. In fairness, they should celebrate as of equal merit some writer from every shire in England.

And let’s explore this rabbit hole further. How many Irish writers can you name? Several, I’ll warrant. Ireland, current population 6 million, has won four Nobel Prizes for Literature. And Joyce didn’t get one. Yet Ireland has been colonized by England far longer than any place in Africa. Britain held Kenya for 60 years. Britain held Ireland for 700 years. And with a deliberate attempt to wipe out Irish education and throw the Irish off the land. 

Demonstrably, if Shakespeare outshines all African writers, it is not because of colonialism. And it is not because Shakespeare has been artificially promoted for nationalistic or propagandistic reasons. These Irish writers certainly weren’t. 

Shakespeare indeed objectively suggests the superiority of English culture; at least when it comes to authoring plays. At least when it comes to crafting language.

Different cultures indeed have different specialties. You can’t beat Russians in the novel. You can’t beat Italy for cuisine. You can’t beat France for painting. You can’t beat America for sports.

Different cultures are better and worse at different things; and, given that a culture is a system for living the best possible life, it is also reasonable to argue that one culture is overall superior to another.

After all, whether it was right or wrong to do, what made it possible for a relatively small island off the coast of Europe to, at one point, control one quarter of the world’s population and one quarter of the world’s resources? 

Malice? 

The claim is ridiculous.

The ideal, of course, is to take the best from each culture, and combine them to create the best possible culture. This is what immigrant nations like the US, Canada, Australia, or Singapore have been able to do: the melting pot. To a lesser extent, this is what trading nations like England, the Netherlands, or ancient Greece, have been able to do. And these have generally become the most successful cultures as a result.

This is what we must return to.  This involves, in the first place, celebrating merit. 

East Is East, and West Is West

 

I was recently referred to, without malice, as “white.” Nevertheless, I resent the term.

It is dehumanizing to think of people in terms of race, as if we were animals. And nothing could be more cartoonishly superficial than to classify people by skin colour. 

We must also ditch our meaningless purely geographical term “Asian,” which absurdly lumps Koreans with Dravidians with Arabs.

Whenever I go to a Catholic mass, around me are people of all the skin colours you can imagine. And this is my true community, my home. These are the people I have most in common with, and feel most comfortable with; not some random person I meet on the street who has skin the same hue as my own. Let alone some pale face in Turkey or Xinjiang. It is absurd to identify me as “European,” as well. I was not born and have not lived in Europe. I am not “white,” or “European.” I am “Canadian” and “Catholic.”

It is as if, in our scientistic frenzy, we are determined to deny the influence of religion or the existence of culture.

Rather than identifying people by skin colour, which is meaningless, or race, which is dehumanizing, we should classify people by culture. Culture is real.

There are four great cultural zones on this planet: Christendom, Dar al Islam, Hindu India, and the Confucian East. No doubt there are others, less significant, and quickly being assimilated, in Sub-Saharan Africa. And there are smaller anomalous groups like the Jews, the Parsees, the Roma, and the like. These zones are coming together and becoming more similar, with improved communications; but they still real.

They have to do with the basic premises on which the society is built, on which people interact, and on which life decisions are made. With judgements of value and of what is right and wrong.

One can further subdivide: Catholic culture is distinct from Protestant culture, and Orthodox culture is distinct from either. Sunni Islamic culture is distinct from Shia Islamic culture.

We need to be more aware of them, because there can be problems when they mix. Planes can fly into buildings. When they interact, there are no understood ground rules.

This has nothing to do with racism. This has to do with comparative religion.

The Roots of Racism and Prejudice

 

The sinister Christian women of the Deep South

In a recent poetry group, one participant composed a poem ending with a wish that “deep South evangelicals” would “pray for forgiveness for their myriad sins and continual hypocrisy.”

I felt obliged to send her a private note pointing out that this is hate speech. Something published, outside private conversation, that could promote hatred of an identifiable group. Would it sound all right if it read:

“I hope the Jews will pray for forgiveness for their myriad sins and continual hypocrisy.”?

“I hope the Muslims will pray for forgiveness for their myriad sins and continual hypocrisy.”

Or substitute Buddhists, or Hindus, or followers of “aboriginal spirituality.” 

It would be acceptable, true, if written by an evangelical from the Deep South about evangelicals from the Deep South; Christians are good at accusing themselves. But this poet was a Canadian secularist.

I warned her she could conceivably get herself in legal trouble here. And it is worth remembering that anything you put out on the Internet is forever. The political climate can change, and things that are socially acceptable now may not be in the future. What you say now can and may be used against you. 

It is unfortunately currently socially acceptable in Canada to express hatred towards Americans, people from the “Deep South,” and evangelical Christians. She managed to hit all three. That does not make it right. It was similarly socially acceptable to hate Jews in Hitler’s Germany.

Not that I believe there should be “hate laws”; but hate speech is nevertheless an ill thing.

This was her response:

“Yes, I'm aware, and I specifically said "deep south" and not all Evangelicals. And since the re-election of the felon, I am so angry that I don't even care what people think about that. The religious right in the deep south have been planning Project2025 for years, just waiting for the right guy to help them achieve it. Transactional Trump gave them what they wanted, including on SCOTUS, in exchange for votes - and now many millions are and will suffer because of it: the LGBTQ, women in general, pregnant women with complications and will die (and already have), legal immigrants to the US - yes, I've read from credible sources that even legalized citizens from South America have been getting their papers ripped up and they're carted out of the country like criminals ... by the biggest crooks are in the WH, who released the Capital Hill criminals who killed police officers and security personnel - here he is, carting out Venezuelens, many of whom are hard-working, tax-paying folks who lived in the US for many years. 

“I could go on, but I won't. … I appreciate your advice. I am just too mad right now to be sorry about my activist poetry. 

“So, yes, although I have always been against hate speech, I find myself hating the religious right of the US south. But my poem pales in comparison to much that comes out of the felon's mouth.”

Let’s take a closer look.

To begin with, this, surely, is a perfect example of just what she accused the evangelicals of: hypocrisy. She is opposed to “hate speech,” but she has a right to it, because she is angry. Assuming she also shares the view on the left that hurting someone’s feelings is a serious crime, here she nevertheless reserves the right to herself to say what she likes, and “not even care what people think about that.”

She thinks her criticisms are fair, because she said “Deep South,” not all evangelicals. Yet “Deep South evangelicals” is just as much an identifiable group as “evangelicals.” I wonder if she actually has no concept of individuality or individual responsibility. So she has no concept of why racism or prejudice is wrong. This seems possible on the modern left.

“The religious right in the deep south have been planning Project2025 for years.”

Project 2025 itself claims it is a “broad coalition of over 100 conservative organizations.” Not just the “religious right,” then. Its primary sponsor is the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. Not the Deep South. Of course, they might be lying. These could all be front organizations. We could get into conspiracy theories here.

“Transactional Trump gave them what they wanted.” 

It is not clear whether Trump is influenced by the proposals of Project 2025. He says he is not. On the one hand, why wouldn’t he be? He’s a conservative, and the Heritage Foundation is a leading conservative think tank. Think tanks exist to give policy advice. On the other hand, conservative policies are conservative policies; it also seems reasonable to assume that Trump’s policies would be about the same whether or not Project 2025 existed.

Our correspondent must next explain why there is something wrong with the concerns of the religious right, and why there is something wrong with the policies proposed by Project 2025.

She proceeds:

“Including on SCOTUS.” So she is referring to Trump’s appointment of “originalist” justices to the Supreme Court.

Originalism means you interpret the text of the constitution in light of what the framers must have intended, based on historical knowledge.

This applies to abortion, for example: since abortion was medically possible when the Constitution was written and adopted, and was illegal, and such matters were reserved to the states, it seems unreasonable to assume they intended to make abortion a human right. Therefore, no more Roe v. Wade.

She objects to originalism because it leads to a conclusion she does not like.

Here’s a logical problem: our correspondent laments that Trump appointed these judges “in exchange for votes.” First, doing things for votes is more or less what happens in a democracy; so what’s the objection? Other than that the vote went against her own desires. Which must supersede both the popular will and the constitution?

One begins to suspect that narcissism is the key to the modern left.

Second, “Deep South evangelicals” are a relatively small proportion of voters. Many other groups must have consented. Including large numbers of women, an absolute majority of the population. Why not blame women?

There must be some other special reason to hate “Deep South evangelicals.”

“The LGBTQ” will suffer from “it.” 

It is not clear what “it” is—the Supreme Court or Project 2025 or Trump. She does not specify how LGBTQs will suffer. And I would question whether there is any such group.  L’s have no particular interests in common with T’s, for example, and are commonly at loggerheads over washroom use. G’s worry that the current T push is castrating G’s. Many refuse to identify themselves with their sexual preferences or as “LGBTQ.”

Without elaboration, I cannot reasonably guess what she’s on about.

“Women in general” will suffer.

Again the impending oppression is unarticulated. But as noted, women form a majority of voters, and have the power to save themselves if this is so awful. 46% of them, according to exit polls, voted for Trump.

“pregnant women with complications … will die (and already have).”

She does not specify how this will happen. Presumably because states are now free to pass laws that make it illegal to treat women who have ectopic pregnancies and the like. 

This claim appears to be true. I used Grok to check, presumably not a left-wing source. Some women in Texas have been refused treatment by doctors afraid of possible legal liability; some have died. Maternal death rates have apparently risen in states with restrictive abortion laws.

This is alarming. But it is also obviously not the intent of such laws. Presumably it can be addressed by redrafting the laws, and educating doctors as to their legal responsibilities. 

You might be able to put some blame here on overzealous evangelicals in the “Deep South” who pressed for such laws, too hastily drafted. I’d be more inclined to blame the legislators and the doctors.

“…legal immigrants to the US - yes, I've read from credible sources that even legalized citizens from South America have been getting their papers ripped up and they're carted out of the country like criminals.”

Grok, which synthesizes all net sources, says this has never happened. Some US citizens have been mistakenly detained, until their citizenship was established. None have been deported.

Trump “released the Capital Hill criminals who killed police officers and security personnel.”

Grok confirms that no police or security personnel were killed at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. This is a commonly repeated falsehood on the left.

“Here he [Trump] is, carting out Venezuelens, many of whom are hard-working, tax-paying folks who lived in the US for many years.”

No doubt there are Venezuelans in the US who are illegal immigrants, have been here for many years, have paid taxes, and are being or will be deported. However, they are still criminals; they are in the US illegally. Paying taxes does not permit or waive punishment for crime.

“My poem pales in comparison to much that comes out of the felon's mouth.”

She gives no examples. To say that some Mexicans are rapists, or that some Haitians eat cats or dogs, or that Covid came from China, is not hate speech. These are simple statements of fact, even if erroneous, and provable. 

So can we understand from all this where the hate is from? Given its incoherence, I think the real key must be something left unspoken: I say it is a hatred of Christians. Everything else is constructed to justify it. This springs from the same font as the eternal hatred of Jews: because either represents the morality as divine mandate, and so is anathema to a guilty conscience.

Scapegoating always follows this pattern. 

Enough with the Red Pill; Try a Chill Pill

 

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven.” – William Wordsworth on the French Revolution.

We are in the middle of a revolutionary period now. So far, fortunately, it has been peaceful. Although that has been a close run thing—the ancien regime has resorted to some brutal and disturbing tactics. But it does seem they are now preparing to accept defeat. God willing.

Revolutions are exciting; all things suddenly seem possible. I remember the 60s.

But it is easy to slip into irrational expectations. “We want the world, and we want it now.” 

Then when those in power inevitably cannot meet them, the revolution begins to devour its children. Moderation becomes a dirty word, and upsetting applecarts becomes an addictive drug. Just to get that rush of infinite possibilities again.

A recent tweet on X: “Who needs to worry about Democrats when we have a president elect that won't support the base that supported him. Johnson needs to go, H1B needs to go. Illegals need to go. You want compromise but you aren't offering us anything.”

Demands to deport all illegals have morphed into demands to deport all immigrants. Complaints about Muslim immigrants not assimilating and committing terrorism have moved on to complaints about Indian immigrants not assimilating and littering and being rude.

Talk of an emerging “woke right” seems appropriate. Racism against whites must not be simply replaced with racism against immigrants. The scapegoating must stop. The pendulum must stop swinging.

All men are equal in God's sight. Immigration should be meritocratic. Culture is not race. Assimilation must be the goal.

No Irish Need Apply

 

The racial discrimination in Canada—and the US and Britain too—has become more egregious now than it ever was in the days of the Civil Rights marches. Today I note this line in a communication from the League of Canadian Poets about an upcoming contest:

“Each submission much be accompanied by an entry fee of $20. Discounted entry fees ($5) are available to Black, Indigenous, racialized, and LGBTQI2S+ poets.”

Such statements are  common now. They are blatant violations of both the US Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Which shows the sad truth that such charters in the end only protect already-favoured groups. What is needed is a change in hearts. They are in open violation of the principles of Martin Luther King Jr., that we must judge one another not by the colour of our skins, but by the content of our character—the same moral Jesus gives us in the parable of the Good Samaritan.  They are open violations of the principle on which the US, and modern liberal democracy, was founded, that “all men are created equal,” and have the right to equal protection under the law. But that is another example of how such high-sounding principles end up protecting only already-favoured groups. Somehow the US, demanding equality for themselves vis a vis England’s ruling classes, saw no immediate need to free their slaves. 

We thought we had gotten beyond all this in the 1960s; it has all come raging back. It leads to the conclusion from such bitter experience that all people are inherently racist and xenophobic. This is a tendency we must all consciously fight against, as we must always fight against aspects of our animal nature. We are herd animals. Small children will often show a bad reaction to an unfamiliar skin colour; as a dog will. It is a survival instinct to be suspicious of the outsider, the stranger. Couple to that the universal need for scapegoats.

If we forget it, or, yet more stupidly, start claiming that only one particular racial group is subject to racist feelings, we end up doing horrible things to one another. We end up in Holocausts.

Bellevue House Decolonized

 

In a recent discussion among the hosts at Daily Wire, Andrew Klavan rightly argued that antisemitism is not like other forms of racism or discrimination. It is something special, and infinitely worse. The other hosts, even Ben Shapiro, the orthodox Jew, did not see this. 

As Ben Shapiro did point out, however, it is the form of discrimination most likely to end in genocide—arguably the only one.

In other forms of racism, the outsider group is considered inferior. Jews are hated, however, because they are perceived to be superior: “too powerful.”

You do not hate people you think are inferior to you. You are likely to feel sorry for them, and to reach out with. That is the actual experience of blacks or indigenous people. Granted, you don’t want them marrying your daughter. But you don’t hate them, and otherwise wish them well.

You only hate those you think are better than you. These are the people you want to harm or kill.

It is the story of Cain and Abel, repeated endlessly; the second sin of man. God seems to favour this people. Left alone, they always seem to succeed. They seem more intelligent and talented than you. 

Therefore, they must be kept down, or killed. 

To want to harm or kill another because they are more talented or intelligent than you is uniquely and gravely, as Klavan points out, a sin against God himself. God bestows talents. Antisemitism is perhaps the purest proof that someone is a bad person.

Not only Jews, to be fair, are Jews. While they are the obvious historical example, other groups are similarly hated for their accomplishments and talents. The Hakka Chinese in Southeast Asia. The Armenians in the Middle East. I suspect—I may be prejudiced—that this is behind the longstanding English determination to wipe out the Irish. It is clearly behind the current hatred of “straight white males.”

It is behind the Marxist/ socialist hartred for the rich, and ascription of all ills to “rich capitalists” and “greedy corporaions.”

And it directs hatred towards any unusually intelligent or talented or successful individual. Such as Sir John A. Macdonald.

The current frenzy of tearing down statues, renaming streets, and desecrating museums is the same impulse. Sir John A. Macdonald is hated not for any crime, but precisely for his accomplishments. It is worth pointing out that he was one of the greatest advocates in his day for Canada’s native people. As was Egerton Ryerson, another man whose statues have been torn down. Yet those who, like George Brown, actually opposed aboriginal interests, do not receive criticism. Their buildings are not renamed. Macdonald is actually envied for his greater moral goodness. Henry Dundas, similarly, was a leading abolitionist in England; yet he, and not the slavers, is condemned for slavery, and his name erased.

We live in an evil age. What is happening to day is what we will later have to apologize for, and will shamefacedly want to erase from our history books. Like the Cultural Revolution in China, or the Nazi period in Germany.

The Real World of Discrimination

 

A typical caricature of the "eternal Jew." Always thinking, God forbid.

The image of Harvard’s black female president refusing to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews—and yet, everyone expects, able to retain her job, despite revelations that she plagiarized parts of her doctoral thesis-- is a neat visual representation of an important truth. Although we falsely conflate them, discrimination against Jews and discrimination against blacks (or women) are fundamentally opposite phenomena.

One never or rarely hears of anyone ever calling for the extermination of blacks or women. If anyone did, the outcry against them would be monumental. If there are occasional claims that someone somewhere once did, if traced back, they turn out to be false claims. The same could be said for aboriginals. If anyone ever called for their extermination, they would be hated more than Simon Legree. (And nobody apparently ever said “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” That was a slander used against US General Sheridan precisely because it would destroy his reputation if believed.)

But one hears often of calls or sees actual attempts to wipe out Jews. Also, men, Irish, and East Asians. This is not just so in recent “woke” times, either. This is a historical constant.

Society as a whole readily sees fit to give blacks, or women, or aboriginals, special advantages: scholarships, affirmative action programs, easier sentencing in court, extra government benefits.

Society never considers giving Jews, men, Irish, or East Asians any such special advantages. The suggestion would be met with scorn or rage.

These two lists are not exhaustive; but "minority" groups always fall into one or the other decisively: the Jewish side, or the black side.

Antisemitism is fuelled by envy and malice: Jews are hated because they seem superior to the rest of us. So too, if to a lesser extent, men, East Asians, or the Irish. Discrimination “against” women, blacks, or indigenous people, in precise contrast, is almost always done out of good intentions, and is meant to be for their benefit. These groups are loved because they are looked down on as inferior. Nobody hates another for being less then they are; they hate for being better.

Not that this discrimination has ever been good for blacks or women or Indians. It is a deprivation of moral agency, and fosters passivity. People do not thrive as pets. But it also prompts them to complain the loudest about discrimination. Once one ha become accustomed to special treatment, one feels a deep injustice whenever it is not forthcoming. When, by contrast, one is accustomed to being discriminated against, one tends to learn to take it silently as one’s fate.

Opposite motives, opposite actions--and opposite results. The Jews manifestly do unusually well despite severe persecution; such as a widespread and systematic attempt to wipe every last one of them out within living memory. The Japanese have recovered from total defeat and Hiroshima within the same time period. The Irish have recovered from the holocaust of the Great Hunger a hundred and fifty years ago, civil war as recently as the 1990s, and are now the richest nation in Europe. Yet blacks are supposed to have never been able to recover from slavery a hundred and fifty years ago—a custodianship justified at the time as for their own benefit. Women cannot recover from a wolf whistle. And indigenous people have supposedly never recovered from the trauma of first contact.

We need to make the clear distinction between malicious persecution, and misguided charity.

Speech after Long Silence

 My apologies for not posting. I was moving, from Toronto to New Brunswick, and on top of the attention this required, had no Internet. I hope to return to a normal schedule soon. Fortunately, it is summer, proverbially a slow news period when many of you may be off on the golf course or at the cottage.

In the meantime, read this harrowing tale of contemporary Canada.

Where's My Cheque?

 

The US Supreme Court decision that “affirmative action” programs for university admission are unconstitutional racial discrimination also makes a case that a great number of whites are entitled to reparations.

The left has long demanded reparations be paid out to blacks for slavery. San Francisco’s city government recently proposed giving each black citizen of the city $5 million. Yet nobody who suffered under slavery is still alive. Nobody who perpetrated the peculiar institution is still alive. Almost all American blacks have some European blood, quite possibly from slaveholders taking advantage of their position. Fewer than one percent of the US population, even during slave times, owned slaves. Most white Americans probably descend from more recent immigrants. Accordingly, the average black American is the individual most likely to owe himself or herself reparations, if anyone does; not the innocent general public who just happen to have the wrong colour of skin.

One might argue that, aside rom slavery, reparations are due for Jim Crow laws, for segregation in the US South. But the last of that was overturned by the civil rights acts in 1964-65. To have been personally subject to it, you would have to be over 65 or so now. And it would have affected you only for a brief period at that. To have been discriminated against in college admissions or for a job, you would have to be about 75.

By contrast, affirmative action in college admissions, systemically discriminating against whites and Asians, was introduced in the mid-Sixties and has continued until today. This means that every white native-born American alive today has suffered from systemic discrimination for most or all of their lives, and is justly entitled to reparations, if there is any argument for reparations at all.

Clown World

 

So what are the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, recently controversially honoured by the LA Dodgers, all about?

The Dodgers, and their other deenders, will say they are a charitable organization. Which they are—they promote AIDS education and hand out free condoms. But this does not excuse them if they are also promoting hatred towards some identifiable group. The Taliban also does charity work. The Mafia did. So did the Nazi party. It’s good PR for wicked people.

According to Wikipedia, the group was founded in 1979, as a performance troupe. Their public performances and public protests, then, are their raison d’etre. They diversified into charity work once the AIDS epidemic began to ravish their homosexual community. And their proposed solution—essentially, use a condom—is arguably not the best advice. It might have caused more deaths than it prevented.

Their performances, their name, and the nun’s habit are obviously meant to ridicule the Catholic Church.

But why whiteface? 

Had they chosen blackface, the charge of racism would have been obvious.

You might argue that they were trying to look like clowns, not white people. But then, why do clowns have white faces? When old-time entertainers put on blackface, wasn’t it to mock black people, to make them look foolish? They were blackface clowns. Isn’t the principle the same for whiteface clowns?

But, you might argue, aren’t the perpetrators themselves already white? Are they mocking their own race? And if so, isn’t self-mockery okay?

Not all ”white” people are particularly pale. The English, let alone continental Europeans, are markedly darker in complexion than those living further north, the Irish, the Scottish, the Scandinavians. Are they mocking themselves by making their faces paler, or one or another of these other racial groups?

Why does the classic clown have red hair? Isn’t this mockery of a genetic characteristic concentrated in Northern Europe: in the Irish and Scottish in particular?

Clarabell the Clown

Of course it is. Whiteface clowns are racist if blackface clowns are, in the same way. The Irish have traditionally been held in contempt in the English-speaking world. 

In particular because they are Catholic.

Bozo the Clown

Live public performances in clown makeup of course have an additional benefit: they attract children.

Is it all starting to make a perverse sense?

Ronald McDonald

Check Your Apple iWatch--Is It 1619?

 

Got any fire water?

One of Xerxes’s correspondents (Xerxes being my anonymous friend the left-wing commentator) writes: “The British importation of enslaved Africans and the treatment of Native Americans by British colonists embedded racism, White Supremacy, and Christian Nationalism as the unholy trinity in the DNA of the United States of America 150 years or more before such a country existed.”

Welcome to the 1619 project and the nonsense peddled now as history.

Leave aside that tiresome and racist cliche “in the DNA.” What strikes me more is anachronism. It reminds me of Whoopi Goldberg insisting that Hitler could not have been a racist because Jews are not black. The term “white supremacy” popped up in print only about 2016. Nobody uses it except the left, as a term of condemnation. If nobody uses it to describe their own beliefs, and the early English settlers in America would not know what it meant, is it sane to use it to describe their opinions? If you are obsessed with skin colour, it does not follow that everybody else is. They were more concerned with your religion than the depth of your tan.

But as to religion, I’ve only started seeing “Christian nationalism” pop up in the last year. Again, it is used only on the left, to tar people they disagree with. I presume it means wanting a nationally established church, as we see in England. Not something anyone advocates even today, in America. Although it also does not seem an especially troublesome idea.

Since many of the early settlers in the US had come to seek religious freedom, because they dissented from the established church in England, calling them “Christian nationalists” is the opposite of the truth.

You might argue that many of them sought to run their governments in the New World on a religious basis. But why is this a problem for anyone? In the context of this new world, anyone who dissented could simply move on and found their own colony on their own principles beyond the next headland. Which is, historically, what they did.

Were they “racists”? The term “race” only developed its modern meaning with Darwin. Before Darwin in The Descent of Man presented man as just another animal, competing with other animals for survival, race was not a thing. Breeding was, true—that is, being well brought up. That had to do with education.

Why did some of the early settlers at least consider it fair game to enslave Africans in the New World? Even though this was against established Christian principles, and would not be tolerated back in England? Not because they thought them an “inferior race.” It was because they considered them uncivilized—not well brought up. They enslaved one another, for one thing. They ate one another, for another. They knew nothing of God or Christian morality or settled agriculture. Buying them, already enslaved, out of Africa was justified as rescuing them from this toxic culture. 

No doubt there was cynicism involved; but having them continue to work as slaves was justified as a process of civilization, which given the continuing influence of parents and cultural traditions was bound to take several generations, and justified as well as supporting the costs of this vast rescue mission. The logic may have been wrong or self-serving, but nobody spoke of “white supremacy.”

The issues in dealing with Native Americans were similarly not racial; neither the Indian nor the settlers thought of themselves or one another in racial terms. In principle and in practice, anyone could join any Indian tribe, be they black, white, blue, Iroquois or Eskimo. The European settlers did not see themselves as a race, but as a community united by religious values. The two groups often intermarried. The issue was that the Indians travelled in gangs like the tribes in the Mad Max movies. The settlers wanted to establish peace and order. They sought to establish governments to protect rights of property and security of the person. Nobody was thinking in terms of “white supremacy.”

We may disagree with their actions, or their attitudes. But we have no right to fight straw men.

The Growing Menace of Catholicism

 

You may have wondered how the American FBI has decided that traditionalist Catholics are “white supremacists.”

I think I can explain.

In a recent class with a middle school student, the text offered this proposed essay topic:

“Why everyone should be vegetarian.”

“That’s really racist!” he responded.

“Racist? Why?”

“It is forcing everyone to be vegetarian.”

“I don’t see that. It says ‘should,’ not ‘must.’ It could be giving health advice.”

“OK, my bad. It’s not racist.”

This seems to reveal the assumptions children are getting indoctrinated into, either in school or, possibly, on the Internet.

“Racism,” in woke vernacular, no longer has anything to do with race. It is about culture. Or rather, it is about morality. 

Because cultures supposedly have different moralities, any mention of moral issues is racist. Even if the moral stance cannot be identified with a particular culture, let alone a particular race. You are claiming racial superiority the moment you say anything is wrong. 

It is the belief in “cultural relativism” that makes the woke so supportive of multiculturalism. It even leads them to support Islam, a highly moralistic religion. Because its morality is supposedly different from Christian morality; so it helps to undermine morality generally. 

But Satanism is better. Any reference to religion is prohibited in the public square; Super Bowl commercials about Jesus are widely condemned by the woke. But Satanism figures prominently at the Grammies.

This belief that the different world religions differ in their moral values is false. Except around the edges. Kant has proven that the basis of morality is universal and self-evident. The woke believe in moral relativism because they want to believe this. They need to out of a guilty conscience. Which goes back to abortion and the sexual revolution. For proof, mention the word “sin,” or phrase “conventional morality,” and they will automatically think of sex.

So, because traditionalist Catholics hold to traditional moral values, they are by this definition white supremacists. No matter what their skin colour, or opinions on race. Anyone who believes in right and wrong is a white supremacist.

Of course, the awkward corollary is that all non-whites are evil. This may, in time, come back to bite. You never know. Funny how conscience leads us into self-condemnations like that.

Now go away and let the woke do whatever their baser instincts tell them to.

Black History Month

 

Glooscap celebrates black history month

Friend Xerxes has written in praise of Black History Month, and suggests we should also have an Aboriginal History Month.

As a fan of history, I am not a fan of “black history month.”

Black history, or aboriginal history, has not been neglected in the past. There simply isn’t much of it.

History relies on written documents, as science relies on experimentation. That is why we call the time before the invention of writing “prehistoric.” If we are relying instead on oral traditions or personal recollections, that is folklore. If we are relying on physical artifacts, that is archaeology. Both no doubt interesting fields, but not history. History is traditionally studied in the public schools, and folklore and archaeology are not.

Because African American slaves were preliterate or illiterate, and the First Nations had no writing, they had no history until contact. After contact, what records we have are scanty, and mostly written by Europeans. Their accounts are inevitably superficial.

One might want to argue that folklore or archaeology ought to be taught in the schools, as well as history. Perhaps; but then you cannot argue that the folklore of these two groups has been ignored in comparison to that of other groups. Collections of Indian and African tales, songs and poems, have been popular for generations. You probably grew up, as I did, gentle reader, playing cowboys and Indians, camping in fake teepees, watching Western movies, reading tales of Glooscap or of Br’er Rabbit, listening to rock and roll, rhythm and blues, jazz, soul, blues and gospel.

If we are going to have a “black folklore month,” or “aboriginal folklore month,” this is giving preference to these two groups; and not because their folklore has been previously neglected. It is not “reverse discrimination.” It is just discrimination.

You might want to argue that, folklore aside, blacks and indigenous people deserve special consideration in general, on this and on everything, because their ancestors were poorly treated and underwent suffering. But then what about other groups in Canada or North America whose ancestors were treated as badly or worse, and in many cases more recently: the Jews, the gypsies, the Ukrainians, the Cambodians, the Irish, the Polish, the Chinese, the Armenians, the Koreans, and so forth?

Discrimination now cannot fix discrimination in the past. You cannot go back and change the past. The actual people discriminated against are almost all dead now, as are the people who discriminated against them. All you are doing is creating more discrimination and injustice, which in turn can never be compensated for.

There is value in knowing and understanding the sufferings of our ancestors. We ought to study slavery, the Holocaust, the Great Famine, the Holodomor, the Killing Fields, and the Highland Clearances, such conflicts as there were between European settlers and First Nations, in Canada and elsewhere, and so forth. But not just one or two, and ignore the others.

The reason we study history is to learn the lessons of the past. And this is certainly one. 

Because such events are past, they are, in theory, less influenced by current politics and vested interests. This is why we study history in the schools, and why we should. We thus see human decisions and their results writ large, and learn lessons about human psychology and behaviour. We can avoid the mistakes of our ancestors. Like discrimination. We are not supposed to repeat it.

For this reason, history is all about cause and effect. What were the causes of the First World War? Of the rise of Hitler? What were the effects of the Treaty of Versailles? Of the Danegeld? And so forth. Because if a certain course results in human suffering, we do not want to do it again.

In doing history, we must rely on the written evidence. The same issues of evidence pertain as might in a court trial: hearsay is too easily falsified and cannot be examined. 

This means history is mostly about socially important people; their decisions and the results of their decisions are those for which we have documentation. This may look like bias, but it is necessity.

Multicultism

 

In 1897, Leonard Cohen’s grandfather founded the Jewish Times in Montreal, Canada’s first English-language Jewish-interest newspaper. 

“The paper had a clear mandate: to help Canadianize the teeming influx of Yiddish-speaking Jews arriving from Eastern Europe…. Essentially the journal sought to promote the adoption of mainstream non-Jewish social customs that, religious observance aside, would make Jews indistinguishable from their gentile neighbours” (Michael Posner, Leonard Cohen: Untold Stories. The Early Years).

 

 

This is the attitude past waves of Canadian immigrants took: the task was integration, Canadianization.

Now imagine if Leonard Cohen’s family, and the rest of Montreal’s Jewish community, had instead embraced the modern cult of multiculturalism, and decided the imperative was instead to cling to their Jewish and European traditions. Imagine Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, A.M. Klein, Mordecai Richler publishing only in Yiddish, in small-circulation Yiddish-language journals, writing of Ashkenazi ethnic culture and concerns. Or, if writing in English, writing only of Jewish life. Imagine how much poorer Canadian, and indeed world, culture would be. And imagine how much worse this would have been for them. They would not have had a career.

That gives some sense of the harm done by multiculturalism. It is, not to split hairs, pure evil. It is pandemonium. We need the melting pot. We need e pluribus unum.

I am, by family tradition, part Mohawk (“Haudenosaunee”), if mostly Irish. Some of my in-laws and cousins have their Indian cards; although I would never consent to carry one. I am Canadian, and all Canadians are Metis. 

Growing up largely in an immigrant area of Montreal, I studied world religions and literatures to the doctoral level. I have spent half my adult life in Asia. My wife is East Asian; my kids are tri-racial. Yet I have no place in a “multicultural” Canada, because I am too multicultural. I do not fit into any convenient, mutually hostile, ethnic ghetto. Canadians have no place in modern Canada. We are discriminated against.

Cultures belong to people, not people to cultures. Cultures have no rights; they are not alive. People have rights. Multiculturalism is a violation of human equality; an insult to human dignity. It promotes hatred of your neighbour, because he is different from you. It is racism. It is corrosive of Canadian society and culture.

It is harmful, most of all, to more recent immigrants. Anyone who has lived in a new culture knows the dangers. Culture shock is the common reaction. The unwise retreat into their own world, fearing and hating those around them. Their daily lives become hellish; nothing around them makes sense. Some literally go mad. Others become aggressively antisocial. 

The cure, as old hands always tell the newcomers, is to get out and engage with the culture. Learn how things work here. 

Multiculturalism thus encourages exactly the wrong attitude and the worst behaviour.

Life in a ghetto, which it demands, also limits economic opportunities. Ask Martin Luther King; such segregation is what he fought so hard against. It is why Canadian First Nations are so poor—that is, those who have stayed on the reserves. Why did we decide apartheid and segregation was a good idea?

Multiculturalism also condemns the immigrant to live his life in exile. Home is forever far away, in the land he left; Canada remains forever foreign. Our patriotic task as Canadians, and what we owe our neighbours, is to build a sense of common home here, in this land, among these people.

Culture is a series of tools, strategies and knowledges, if you will allow the plural, for a good life. As with any other technology, it ought to evolve and improve over time. If it does not, it is failing; it is dying. It needs to be abandoned for a better tool. Only a fool sticks with a poor tool simply because it is the one he is familiar with. 

As an immigrant nation, Canada has the perfect opportunity to assimilate the best elements of all the world’s cultures. This should make Canadian culture the strongest and best the world has ever known. That is what the Canadian “mainstream” is, and what it has always done.

To encourage us instead to stick with a horse and buggy, because our ancestors drove one,  is spectacularly stupid. Or intentionally malicious.

Al Purdy's Racism

 

In a piece he titled “Norma, Eunice, and Judy,” Al Purdy lamented, as I do, the general disrespect in Canada for Canadian culture. He regrets, in his own day, Canadian children growing up thinking they live in “a nation without culture, art, or literature.” It is, he says, “a country where the native literature is added to English Literature or American Literature like an afterthought. Where it is said to be not worth teaching.”

It is the colonial mentality. And, if anything, it is getting worse, with our own prime minister (eternal shame be upon him) claiming there is no Canadian culture, with government cultural funding going as a priority to “multiculturalism.” In other words, any culture but Canadian culture.

Purdy then tells the tale of Jim Foley, an unusually well-educated Ontario high school teacher who “realized that Canada must be the only country in the world where high school kids aren’t taught their own literature.” He began his own database of Canadian literature, confident that in a few years “Margaret Laurence, Atwood, Layton, Garner, and all the others who talk about the place we live in, their voices will be heard and taught in our schools.”

These words were spoken in 1974. It is now the butt end of 2022, and it still has not happened. Instead, the reverse. Kids now read American pop novels in school, watch Hollywood movies, and read and discuss anything written by anyone claiming to be aboriginal. Or failing that, they will be assigned a book by an immigrant with views hostile to the country and the culture. 

Precisely the attitude of a colonizer.

And Purdy and Foley would now be declared “racist” for wanting to promote Canadian literature.

It's the Jews. It's Always the Jews

 

My leftist friend Xerxes surprises me by devoting his latest column to how “the Jews” have 

“re-invented” Christmas. This they have done, according to him, by dominating the music industry and writing Christmas songs on purely secular themes.

This is where we are. It is not a good place.

Xerxes is wrong, to begin with, to suggest that non-religious Christmas songs are any new thing. Christmas has always been a celebration of winter and the solstice as well as of the birth of Christ. It has always had its secular side of general merriment and misrule.

Here is a brief selection of old and purely secular Christmas tunes:

Deck the Halls

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

The Wren

Jingle Bells

Here We Come a Wassailing

O Tannenbaum

He is wrong too to say that all modern secular Christmas songs are written by “the Jews.” Here are a few secularist songs and songwriters I am pretty sure are not Jewish.

“Little St. Nick” – Brian Wilson

“(Simply Having) A Wonderful Christmas Time”—Paul McCartney

“Happy Christmas (War is Over)” – John Lennon

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” – Mariah Carey

When I was a kid, “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth” was a popular novelty song. The author also wrote hymns—not Jewish.

Not that Xerxes is complaining all that loudly. Almost the last thing he cares about is anything going secular. He ends the column saying that St. Paul condemned holidays anyway.

But that leaves the whole point of the column being to blame the Jews for something, anything.

Without demanding punishment, Xerxes includes all the elements of anti-semitism. First, the idea that Jews act as a unit; that they have an agenda. Second, that they are powerful, and more or less secretly powerful. They are controlling things behind the curtain. Third, that their agenda goes against the interests and desires of the majority.

Very sinister. And Bob’s your uncle, you have the International Jewish Conspiracy. You have the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This was always the predictable end of “intersectionality.” The inevitable trajectory was to target the smallest distinct group with the greatest available concentration of wealth to pillage. So the scapegoat class who owed reparations perhaps started out as “whites,” but then “white males,” then “cis white males,” or non-disabled cis white males; while the supposedly oppressed class expanded from blacks to blacks and women, blacks, women, and people of any skin tone other than white, but then also Muslims, then also sexual nonconformists of any description. The inevitable end-point was everybody versus the Jews, the smallest identifiable minority with the greatest wealth. Modern leftists see this just as Hitler saw it. 

I expect Kanye West’s recent outbursts have a lot to do with other people feeling freer to go here—although everyone was going here already.

One aspect of West’s argument was “Why can’t I complain about the Jews? I can complain about everybody else, but not the Jews.”

But that is not true. Black people have licence to complain publicly about everybody else, except the Jews. The only people white people can complain about are cis white males. And apart from complaining--the fact seems suppressed, but Jews are, in proportion, the one group most targeted by hate crimes. 

The modern left is not just Fascist. It is becoming Nazi.