White Supremacist Spotted in the Wild

Rep. Steve King

After much desperate searching and sounding of alarms, an actual white supremacist seems to have been located in the US.

Or, actually, no, not quite. It’s Rep. Steve King of Iowa, and what he actually said was that he did not see why the terms “white nationalist,” “white supremacist,” and “Western civilization” have become a problem. It does not follow that he would use them to describe himself. And he has since specifically denounced these attitudes on the floor of the House, and said they do not describe his own views.

But it seems to be the best we have.

So he has been publicly denounced now by Jeb Bush, Ben Shapiro, the National Review, Paul Ryan, the House Republican Whip, the Republican National Committee Chairman, Tim Scott, and on and on—all Republican or right-wing voices.

This reaction does seem over the top; on the other hand, I can understand it. Republicans and the right do not want to be associated with such views, even tangentially. Even if nobody actually holds them.

Neither do I.

Let’s look at them.

“White nationalist.”

Nationalism is always immoral. One has a right to feel attachment to the polity in which you were nurtured and raised, and you have some obligation to it for this. If it works well, you have a duty to protect it, for the sake of mankind. But beyond this, nationalism violates the basic moral principle of human equality.

Unfortunately, we have a tendency to glorify nationalism in certain contexts: we like and celebrate Cree nationalism, or Inuit nationalism, or perhaps Quebec nationalism, or Scottish nationalism, or Chinese nationalism, or black nationalism; or the many nationalisms implicitly celebrated by multiculturalism. It too often seems that our problem is with “whites,” rather than with nationalism. This is a vital concern; but it obviously is not helped by promoting white nationalism along with the others.

Secondly, there is no “white nation.” There is no “white” ethnicity. To be a nation in the ethnic sense implies a shared language, history, perhaps religion. In North America, where King lives, there is no distinction among Americans on any of these grounds that also corresponds to their skin colour. In Europe, those who share the skin colour, conversely, can have quite different languages and histories. Mostly Irish by ancestry, why would I want to identify as “white,” and consider myself ethnically the same as an Englishman? My ancestors fought against that for centuries.

“White supremacy”

This is a term that has no accepted definition. On these grounds alone, it should not be used.

If it means special rights for some based on their skin colour, it is of course immoral. It violates the principle of human equality. Unfortunately, we violate human equality all the time now by giving a variety of groups special rights based on their skin colour: affirmative action in all its forms. So again, it looks as though our objection is not to discrimination, but to “whites.” But advocating special rights for “whites” does not fix the problem. It makes it worse.

Some of those opposing Steve King have not helped the case at all, by making the argument that he is wrong on the grounds that non-whites have actually contributed a great deal to civilization. The problem is that, no, objectively, the contribution by people with “white” skin really has been disproportionate. Those arguing against the claim on these grounds have to resort to verbal tricks like defining Italians, Greeks, Slavs, or Middle Easterners as “non-white,” in order to then show that non-whites have been holding up their side. Define “white” as cognate to the scientific racial category “Caucasian,” and their arguments collapse. Some impressive stuff from China and Japan, but on the whole, Caucasians have indeed produced more than their numbers warrant.

But that is to get lost in the weeds. The doctrine of human equality does not imply that all humans are equal in all their abilities. To suggest so is transparently wrong. And just as humans can vary in individual abilities, they can certainly vary by group. For example, Caucasian Europeans really do have higher average IQs than sub-Saharan Africans.

This is not relevant. Human equality is founded on the fundamental premise that we are all children of God, created by him, and he must therefore love us equally. We are all equal in our intrinsic moral worth, but (of course) not in our abilities. We must all therefore treat one another respectfully and strictly as our individual merits warrant.

“Western civilization”

Seems innocuous, but again, I think it is a harmful concept. The proper distinction is between civilization and barbarism. And the path to civilization is simple: civilization is, broadly, technology for living. To become civilized, you select the best option available for whatever you need to accomplish, from whatever the source. Not to do so is to willfully remain less civilized. To speak of “Western civilization” is implicitly to violate this principle, and so to advocate barbarism.

Because of natural geographical barriers, civilization has over past centuries developed largely independently, and so differently, in different parts of the world. It has been somewhat different in Europe, China, India, or the Middle East. But now that we are all in communication, it makes no sense to preserve the distinction. Why would you refuse a better product because it is made in China?

I also believe that, as far as technologies for living go, the Judeo-Christian-Hellenic foundation on which European civilization has been built is more solid and seems to have been more productive over the long term than Confucianism and Buddhism, in the Far East, Hinduism in India, or Islam in the Middle East. I think that recommends it as a technology to be embraced everywhere.

Many in China and Africa are currently coming to that same conclusion. Just as many in Northern Europe or the Americas have in the past.