Biden 2020 with Corrective Lenses

Showing again his narcissistic colours, Joe Biden has just announced his candidacy for US president, by basing it on a lie. He says he feels called to action to stop Trump, because he has openly endorsed white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan, and Neo-Nazism. His evidence is what Trump said about Charlottesville: that “there were some very fine people on both sides.”

Trump’s words were surely meant in good heart, to encourage reconciliation. But when he said them, he also explicitly excluded and condemned Neo-Nazis and white nationalists. As well as the Antifa activists who had come to crack heads. As he should have. The same violent people Biden now unreservedly extolls.

Biden is demonstrating classic narcissistic behavior: truth has no value to him. All that matters is what furthers his interests. And he will say it with all apparent sincerity. He is gaslighting the electorate.

I doubt Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee. His current high ride in the polls is surely based mainly on name recognition. Having been VP for eight years, it has also not been his role to speak out independently on any issues. He has served only as a reassuring grey presence at Obama’s side. He has not run for office since. Accordingly, few in the public have a strong sense of his views; he is just a smiling, friendly face at this point.

As soon as he engages with other candidates, and marks out his own positions, he is sure to alienate some of his current support.

And, of course, he has a closet jammed full of high-proof ammunition for opposition researchers. It is a surprise to me that his history of pawing and groping has not already torpedoed his candidacy. It seems the left has turned away from their previous zeal on this brief now that they have belatedly realized that it can make Democrats look bad more easily than Republicans. But even aside from this, Biden has an easily documented history of public lying, and some of his past positions on issues are now considered disqualifying to those on the left. Surely his Democratic opponents will use these against him.

More broadly, Biden is the classic wheeling and dealing, gladhanding politician. The rise of Trump on the right, and Sanders on the left, of Obama before them, of Corbyn in England and Macron in France, of Zelensky in Poland, and on and on, are obvious signs that the public is fed up with such politicians and such politics. The cynical game becomes too clear in an era of social media and constant coverage.

Even Kamala Harris, whom I had picked as an early favourite for the Dem nom, seems to have already run afoul of this new mood. Bernie Sanders came out in favour of giving the vote to convicted felons. Harris tagged along by saying the “conversation should be held.” Now Harris is facing big backlash; Sanders isn’t. What’s the difference?

The issue is not the issue. People sense that Sanders is saying what he believes. People sense that Harris is saying whatever she thinks will get her to the nomination.

The same dynamic seems to have already killed Elizabeth Warren, and vaulted Pete Buttigieg to the first tier. For his fifteen minutes; it will not last. Any more than did Betomania before it.

The Human Urge to Destroy

Calvinist "iconoclastic" riot, 1566

Foreigners get noticed in a homogenous place like Korea.

Once, visiting a temple in winter, full of weekend visitors from the town nearby, I saw an exquisite tiny snow sculpture on the temple platform. Someone, out of sheer love of beuty, had created this wonderful thing that soon would melt away. I had to get a picture. Unfortunately, the film in my camera had run out. I had to step away for a minute to reload.

When I had returned, someone had smashed the snow sculpture.

Why?

For the same reason people are suddenly in a fever to destroy statues and memorials of the past everywhere.

I think they noticed the foreigner admiring it, and, because they had not built it, found this intolerable.

This has happened before, many times before.

It famously happened in the seventh century, from whence we get the term “iconoclasm.” Priceless art was destroyed throughout the Byzantine Empire. It happened in the Reformation, with the looting of churches and smashing of images. It happened in the French Revolution, the Mexican Revolution, the Spanish Revolution. It happened in the Cultural Revolution. The Taliban did it in Afghanistan, and Isis is doing it now in Syria and Iraq: going into museums and destroying everything they can.

It is one of the great dangers, perhaps the greatest danger, that civilization faces.

Obviously, there is some basic human instinct at work here.

There is a simple and pretty much absolute principle involved: Creation good. Destruction bad.

This is pure evil. It is the same drive that leads, in most of the same upheavals, to mass murders.

It is also the instinct that prompts assassinations. It is the same instinct that killed Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Kennedys, Lincoln, or John Lennon.

A victim of European Reformation iconoclasm.

This instinct is most properly referred to as “envy.” See the story of Cain and Abel for the classic example.

Creating something significant or beautiful or good is hard work. Few can do it. Destroying something, or killing someone, on the other hand, is dead easy. Anyone can do it. And by doing it to something or someone good, significant, or beautiful, one takes to oneself, in a perverse way, some of the fame of the original creator.

Take down a statue of Robert E. Lee, and you are declaring to the world, if not proving to anyone but yourself, that you are a better and a greater man than that snivelling little Robert E. Lee. And better than the artist who created the statue as well, or the people who organized and supported its creation, I suppose.

All else is alibi.

An interviewer once went to prison to interview Sirhan Sirhan, the murderer of Bobby Kennedy. Sirhan had been working out. When the reporter appeared, he struck a bodybuilder pose, flexed his muscles, and said “So now what do you think of Sirhan Sirhan?”

That, I think, is a window on the soul of an assassin. 

Bamiyan Buddha, destroyed by Taliban.

They want to be someone important. They want to do something big, and they think tearing down something big is their main chance.

God help us, but we are at a time in history when the assassins are being given free rein. There are a lot of them around, given a chance. Hitler had no problem finding willing executioners. They are constrained at most times only by legal sanction.

Quickly, more quickly than many might have imagined, the call to tear down all traces of Confederate memorials in the US is metastasizing, feeding on this basic and base instinct like a fire on gasoline. The oldest American memorial to Columbus has just been destroyed by some vandals in Baltimore. A city in Ohio has banned celebration of Columbus Day.

This could be awkward. If we now have to remove all references to Columbus, we will need, for starters, to rename British Columbia, the nation of Colombia, Columbia University, and Columbus Ohio. And God help us if they twig to Amerigo Vespucci being a colonizer. We will have to rename the USA, plus two continents. But that is the direction we are heading, at warp speed.

In Canada, among the victims so far are poor defenseless Hector Langevin, Egerton Ryerson, Lord Cornwallis, and Sir John A. Macdonald. The teachers of Ontario—teachers!--have just demanded that any schools named after Macdonald be renamed.

But they had better be careful what new name they choose. There is no telling who or what is next. In Ghana, a university has just removed a statue of the racist Mahatma Gandhi.

No Statues of Traitors?

Statue of Louis Riel in front of the Manitoba legislature.

I have now seen a new justification for tearing down Civil War memorials.

A commentator on CNN argued against the statues of Lee and other Confederate figures on the grounds that they took up arms against the US. So why on earth is public money being spend on memorials to traitors? Treason should not be commemorated.

It sounds reasonable—but. By that standard, consider what other statues must come down. In Canada, no commemorating Louis Riel, William Lyon Mackenzie, or Louis-Joseph Papineau, all of whom are honoured and mostly revered. Mackenzie’s house in Toronto is a public museum, and the tone is entirely laudatory. No memorials or commemoration of Sitting Bull, Pontiac, Crazy Horse, Chief Joseph, Geronimo, and many other Indian leaders. Sound good? Also, no John Brown commemorations. He was hanged for treason.

Statue of Crazy Horse in progress.

And, then too, the only difference between Lee and Washington is that Washington's treason succeeded. Washington wanted independence from the home government in London. Lee wanted independence from the home government in Washington. Washington won; Lee lost. The only difference between Robert E. Lee and Sam Houston is that Houston won, in separating Texas from Mexico, and Lee lost, in separating Virginia from the U.S.

Is that really enough to claim such absolute moral high ground?

Art for Politics' Sake

The height of trite: Whenever government puts out something on the arts, it must be illustrated by people dancing. This is from the home page of the PCHA. Art, by contrast, will strive for something fresh and surprising. 

The insanity continues to spread. Now all seventeen appointed members of the Presidential Committee on the Arts and Humanities have resigned in protest against Trump’s even-handed response to the rioting in Charlottesville.

To be fair, these were all Obama appointees, and so may be primarily political hacks. But still—there is something very wrong when every appointed member of the committee on Arts and Humanities is actually opposed to Arts and Humanities.

Maybe this demonstrates the wisdom of the common people in electing Trump. It shows the depravity of the artistic elite. “The Treason of the Intellectuals,” it has been called by one French author. Those in charge in the Arts and Humanities not only no longer believe in either the Arts or the Humanities—they openly and eagerly want to tear them both down.

Here is the full joint resignation letter, with commentary interposed:

Dear Mr. President:
Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville.

[You know something evil is afoot when there is an obvious lie in the first sentence. Trump condemned these groups in a press conference, even before the incident in which someone got killed. He has arguably been a lot better than his immediate predecessor in condemning terrorism.]

The false equivalencies you push cannot stand. The Administration’s refusal to quickly and unequivocally condemn the cancer of hatred only further emboldens those who wish America ill. We cannot sit idly by, the way that your West Wing advisors have, without speaking out against your words and actions.

[Did any of these guys condemn the hate? Are they prepared to even now? Have they, and will they, condemn Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and La Raza? If, on the other hand, they are adamant in condemning only “white” people, or white males, or cis white males—they are the hate.]

We are members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH). The Committee was created in 1982 under President Reagan to advise the White House on cultural issues.

[This looks deceitful—the current members have nothing to do with President Reagan, but were appointed by Obama. They looak as though they are trying to make it appear they do. So much for their moral character.]

We were hopeful that continuing to serve in the PCAH would allow us to focus on the important work the committee does with your federal partners and the private sector to address, initiate, and support key policies and programs in the arts and humanities for all Americans.

[And how exactly is Trump interfering with their doing this? No, clearly, these resigning members of the committee are doing this, not Trump, allowing their politics to come before their stated jobs, and then blaming Trump for it. Lie once, and you will lie about everything.]

Effective immediately, please accept our resignation from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. 

Elevating any group that threatens and discriminates on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, orientation, background, or identity is un-American.

[Indeed it is. And that is just what these committee members are doing. But note that term, “un-American.” It is an interesting term. What might it imply?]

We have fought slavery, segregation, and internment.

[No, I wager you have not. You merely benefit from that fight. You are trying to take credit for the good deeds and hard choices and sacrifices of others. This again reveals your moral character, and it is not attractive to look at.]

We must learn from our rich and often painful history. The unified fabric of America is made by patriotic individuals from backgrounds as vast as the nation is strong. In our service to the American people,

[More cringeworthy self-congratulation. One wildly imagines the American people might be capable of, and prefer, speaking for themselves. Like in electing their president, say.]

we have experienced this first-hand as we traveled and built the Turnaround Arts education program, now in many urban and rural schools across the country from Florida to Wisconsin. 

Speaking truth to power is never easy, Mr. President. But it is our role as commissioners on the PCAH to do so. Art is about inclusion.

[No, it is not. First off, art is not about “Speaking truth to power.” This is insisting that art must be subservient to, and serve, politics. This is a fundamentally anti-art position. Nor is art about “inclusion.” Neither museums, galleries, nor literary publications accept all comers. Just the reverse: It would be truer to say that art is about exclusion. Good art is the rejection of bad art, and of all the humdrum and humbug in the world. These people actually have no sense of what art is.]

The Humanities include a vibrant free press. You have attacked both.

[Trump has attacked neither—neither inclusion nor a free press; whether or not either has to do with art. (And neither really does.) The left, however, with their “hate speech” and “political correctness,” and open hostility to “cis white males” has.

This is one of the main pillars of Trump’s appeal to his constituency: the fight for a free press and freedom of speech. Perhaps the main one.

Racists call anti-racists racists, and themselves anti-racists. Fascists call anti-Fascists Fascists, and themselves anti-Fascists. If you want to do something you know is wrong, the first instinct is to call it the opposite of what it is. You love your children by aborting them. Freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. After all, you work for the Ministry of Truth.]

You released a budget which eliminates arts and culture agencies. You have threatened nuclear war while gutting diplomacy funding.

[Morality, in other words, means giving more money to bureaucrats. Or, as Jesus called them, Pharisees. Bureaucrats are not the poor, and they are not the artists.

Note that it was not Trump that threatened nuclear war, It was Kim Jong Un. Once you have walked through the wonderland mirror, everything is presented as its opposite.]

The Administration pulled out of the Paris agreement, filed an amicus brief undermining the Civil Rights Act, and attacked our brave trans service members.

[Never mind the arguments for or against each of these policy decisions; never mind even if what they say is literally true, as of course it is not. This is to chain the arts and humanities arbitrarily to specific policy decisions. To do so is obviously against the interests of the arts and humanities. It is to enslave and then destroy them for your political purposes.]

You have subverted equal protections, and are committed to banning Muslims and refugee women & children from our great country.

[Another outright lie. Trump has never proposed banning “refugee women and children” from the US. Unless perhaps they mean to suggest that it is immoral to deny automatic entry to any woman or child who claims to be a refugee. In which case, besides being profoundly harmful to the US, this policy would be sexist in the extreme. Only women, and not men?

Trump has never called for anything more than a temporary ban on allowing Muslims into the country. But, even if he had proposed a permanent and total ban, even this would have been a perfectly defensible position. Nobody has an inherent right to immigrate, and no country believes they do. Countries, as voluntary associations, have a right to choose to exclude as well as include when deciding their membership. How they treat citizens—members – is a different issue. Some grounds for discrimination might yet be frivolous, but surely not religion. Religion means values, and shared values are fundamental to the ability of any society to succeed.]

This does not unify the nation we all love.

[I think the charge of dividing the nation falls heavily on those who have been pushing “identity politics” for generations. That would be the left. If these folks are against identity politics, why have they been silent for so long? And they are still pushing division and identity politics here and now. They demand that Trump condemn only one side in a riot with two sides, both using violence. What could be more divisive?]

We know the importance of open and free dialogue through our work in the cultural diplomacy realm, most recently with the first-ever US Government arts and culture delegation to Cuba, a country without the same First Amendment protections we enjoy here.

[I thought they were in favour of First Amendment principles. They just said they were. Shouldn’t this mean condemning Cuba? Sequitur, meet non. I expected those with backgrounds in the Humanities would have some command of basic logic.]

Your words and actions push us all further away from the freedoms we are guaranteed.

[This is an assertion without any visible argument or evidence. It immediately follows what seems to be a demand for closer ties with Cuba. How empty can rhetoric get?]

Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions.

[Again, this is just employing prejudicial language. They offer no examples of “hateful rhetoric,” only the assertion. Yeah, and your mother is ugly!]

We took a patriotic oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

[Interesting. They seem to be using this as if to pull rank. Are they unaware that the President also takes such an oath? They seem to be implying he does not. Nor do they explain how resigning from an arts advisory council supports or defends the US Constitution--even if Trump were somehow violating it. If he were, the recourse would be to the Supreme Court.]

Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values.

[Again, a bit of prejudicial language. Without argument or evidence, at least none apparent here, they are simply asserting that Trump believes in “supremacy” (presumably they mean “white supremacy,” because the word “supremacy” here without a modifier is nonsensical. Anyone with a background in the Humanities ought to understand this much English), discrimination (presumably they mean “racial discrimination”; same problem), and “vitriol.” Maybe Trump believes in vitriol. He should; there is obviously a place for vitriol. Presumably the authors of this letter also believe in vitriol, since they are employing it themselves.

Making them, in their own terms, “not American.”

But then, they also clearly imply there is something wrong with that. Isn’t this the height of nativism? If there is something wrong with being “not American,” what does this say about immigrants? Are they so utterly lacking in self-awareness as not to see this?]

We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.

How is that for claiming the moral high ground? They are declaring themselves “better” in some vague but absolute moral sense. In morality, saying it is always the obvious substitute for doing it.

And, the first letters of each paragraph in the letter, together, spell the word “resist.” Just in case you imagined this was all non-partisan and disinterested.

The final and most important irony is that at the event which initiated this resignation, one side had assembled in support of art and the humanities, and the other side was adamantly opposed to them. We cannot honestly know what else the “alt-right” side believed in; they were not permitted to speak. But one thing we do know with certainty: they were there to protest pulling down a public art installation commemorating American history. There you have it: Art and the Humanities, as they intersect with public life. The one thing we can know for certain about the other side—some have called them the “alt-left,” but we really have no better idea who they were and what they thought—is that they approved this pulling down of monuments.

Trump tried to be neutral. But guess which side his Arts and Humanities Commission falls down on?

They are working against exactly what they were appointed to protect.

On one issue, then, they were right. They absolutely ought to all have resigned.

One hopes Trump will appoint some people who actually like the Arts and Humanities. Or at least know something about them.

Reactions to Charlottesville

Desecration of the corpse of Mussolini

Everybody’s talking about the Charlottesville riots.

Many, even most, claim that Trump was wrong to blame both sides. I think the arguments I have heard for this claim are not tenable.

When Ted Nugent repeated the obvious point that both sides were being violent, and both deserved condemnation, he was interrupted with the question, “Would you have said that had the driver of the car that rammed the crowd been a Muslim terrorist?”

I would. Here’s the comparable scenario: Muslims gather for a rally somewhere—say Charlottesville. Somewhere they are a minority. Perhaps they chant anti-”Infidel” slogans; perhaps not. They carry bats and so forth, no doubt; that is ominous. A group of anti-Muslim protesters quickly gather in the same place, armed and determined to break up that rally. Fighting breaks out.

Some Muslim rams the opposing crowd with a car.

This is very different from a terrorist attack, and I would just as readily say there was blame on both sides, about equally – apart from one specific act of apparent murder, for which one individual is presumably responsible.

Chris Cuomo on CNN asks, “but can’t you see that these statues are deeply upsetting to a group of your fellow citizens”? Paul Krugman asks, “Would we feel okay about statues in Germany celebrating Rommel?”

Answer: there actually are statues of Rommel in Germany, I am told, and nobody has seen a problem. Why not? There are carefully tended grave sites throughout northern France commemorating German war dead from WWII. A man who risks or sacrifices his life deserves respect, regardless of which side he fought for. It is disgusting and cowardly to kick an opponent after he is down, defeated and dead. As Churchill himself said publicly when he heard of the murder of Mussolini; and he used that word, “cowardly.” There is nothing admirable in it.

But then too, even the initial premise is false. It is a false moral equivalence to compare the Confederacy to Nazi Germany. For a number of reasons:

First, Hitler invaded and sought to conquer foreign lands who had not declared war on him: Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, the USSR. The Confederacy invaded no one, and sought only to achieve self-government. They were the invaded party.

Second, slavery is not comparable to genocide. Both are moral evils, but the one is vastly more evil than the other. It was entirely possible for good men to believe that slavery was actually of benefit to the enslaved Africans; that they had it better than their compatriots back in Africa, and were learning from the supposed tutelage. Nobody in good conscience could believe that genocide was in the interests of the Jews.

Third, Nazi Germany was relatively unique in its policy of racial genocide. There are other historical examples, but probably none so systematic and obvious as Nazi Germany. By contrast, the Confederacy was one of many states, in its day, that practiced slavery. Slavery was still legal throughout South and Central America, throughout Africa, throughout the Muslim world, and throughout the Far East. It was its abolition in the US North that was the exception. So it is discriminatory to single out the Confederacy for special condemnation here. They were worse than the Northerners; they were better than most others. If we are going to wipe out all traces of the history of the Confederacy for this, we are going to have to wipe out most of the world’s history. This would be a true crime against humanity.

Am I not promoting hate groups here? Weren't these guys white supremacists?

Perhaps. The problem is, we will never know. They have been so characterized by others. But the counter-protesters managed to prevent them from being allowed to speak for themselves. So all we have to go on is the word of their enemies. Given the circumstances, it is only sane and proper to give them the benefit of the doubt. Moreover, even if they were white supremacists or neo-Nazis, they have the same right as anyone to assemble and to speak, and that right was denied them.

Some American blacks are quite upset over the issue. But they are responsible for their own feelings. Nobody else owes something to them for this reason. Fair comparison: I am myself of mostly Irish ancestry. I surely have a similar reason to get upset at any references to Churchill, Peel, Wellington, the Union Jack, the Queen, or the British connection in Canada.

Do I? Good lord, no. Doesn’t it obviously seem absurd?

To do so would be, in the first place, grotesquely self-centred and self-important. In the second, it would be racist—it would be the sort of “blood guilt” that long justified pogroms against the Jews. It would be ignoring the many good deeds of the British—such as ending the worldwide slave trade, or opening up Canada and Australia to Irish settlement.

And it would above all be utterly childish. To react in such a way is to say as much as that you cannot handle adult life and adult responsibility. You need to be taken care of—by someone, anyone.

Great message to be promoting, guys. Be careful what you wish.

Fascists Always Call Themselves Anti-Fascists. Racists Always Call Themselves Anti-Racists

"Not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Over the last couple of days, people have been coming out and declaring themselves against “racism.”

The problem is, they are not really against racism. They are for it. To the terrible crime of racism, they are adding the terrible crime of lying about it, muddying the waters for those of us who are genuinely opposed to it.

Because when they say they are against racism, what they actually mean is that they are against the groups who assembled in Charlottesville recently to protest taking down the Robert E. Lee statue.

At least some of these groups practiced “white identity politics,” agreed. And white identity politics is racism. Fair enough.

But then, so is “black identity politics.” So is Black Lives Matter. So is “Hispanic identity politics.” So is La Raza. So is Muslim identity politics. So is “CAIR.” And on and on.

So what is racist is to protest against one, and not the others. That is saying that “whites” should not have the same rights as “blacks,” or “Hispanics,” or Muslims. And that is the real racism.

You actually hear statements like “only whites can be racists.” And “all whites are racist.” That is about as racist as a statement can be. An identifiable group of people are all being held guilty of something because of the colour of their skin.

I know what the response to my argument here will be: that racism has to do with power, and so, since straight white males have all the power in current North American society, only they can be racist.

There is a kernel of truth in there. Racism becomes truly dangerous only when exercised by political power—by the government. Individuals are, and ought to be, free to have their differing opinions. Including individuals freely associating in groups.

But who has that political power?

The clearest proof is, who do the laws favour? Whose statues, say, are the government authorities currently tearing down?

How many laws require “affirmative action” for straight white males? How much government money is being publicly put into programs specifically for whites, and white males? What are the laws about bequeathing scholarship endowments for white males, as contrasted to blacks, women, or Hispanics?

In other words, by the obvious test, the clear and present danger right now is racism/sexism against white males, not against blacks, Hispanics, or Muslims.

But, you may say, whites are the majority. Only minorities need protection.

In a democracy, it is true, the majority can run roughshod over a minority. This is a constant danger in a democracy; which is why we have checks and balances against it. Any despised minority can be scapegoated and brutalized by a democratic majority.

Now, guess who is a minority? Straight white males. The doctrine of “intersectionality” has conveniently and seemingly consciously parsed it all so that everyone else is separated off, leaving a minority that can be safely scapegoated. This is no different than had the target been blacks, or Jews, or Freemasons, or gypsies, or “the one percent”: you define your enemy as a minority, and then you can go after them.

Ah, you will object, but this particular minority has a disproportionate amount of financial and political power. So they are still getting more than their fair share.

Fine. Exactly the same argument could be, and was, used, against the Jews in Nazi Germany. They were better off and better educated, on the whole, than other Germans. One could not, then, by definition, be anti-Semitic, right? The Nazis were not racists, right? Only Jews could be racists?

The current rampant and growing racism and sexism against straight white males follows the familiar parabola of racism everywhere. The racists always begin by identifying themselves as the “oppressed”; they are just getting their own back. The Nazis said the Germans to have been viciously oppressed in the Versailles Peace Treaty, at the hands of the international Jews. Mussolini deffined Italy as a “proletarian nation” oppressed by the “plutocracies.” Before the Civil War, the Confederates, with reason, considered themselves an oppressed minority within the Union, being repeatedly pushed around by the more populous and wealthier north. After that war, the KKK considered themselves a purely defensive movement to defend poor Southerners oppressed by the northern carpetbaggers. In apartheid South Africa, the Boers considered themselves to have been oppressed by the British who came in, conquered, and put them in concentration camps. And wanted to throw them to the mercies of the fierce, oppressive Zulus.

This is all simply prejudice and racism as the game has always been played.

There is only one way to end discrimination: you stop discriminating.

Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlottesville

Robert E. Lee, in what is now Charlottesvilles "Emancipation Park"

The recent atrocity in Charlottesville, Virginia, is a useful lesson for American Conservatives in what it is like to be a Muslim these days.

We often complain that Muslims should speak out more loudly against Islamic terrorism. Now Conservatives are in the same position: have we spoken out loudly enough against the killer who drove his car into a crowd of Antifa protestors?

Yet if we do condemn, we are buying in to an offensive, bigoted premise: that these Islamist terrorists, that this driver, have something to do with us and with what we believe. That we bear responsibility, more than more than Baptists or Democrats do. It is a perfect Catch-22. Either way, we are scapegoated.

At the same time, it seems to herd us unwilling into accepting and endorsing a claim that the other side, which we oppose, holds some moral high ground. The truth is, Muslims really do believe, with cause, that modern Western culture is morally depraved. Similarly, those of us on the right believe that the current resort to public violence began on the left, and so the left must take responsibility, indeed, primary responsibility, for this. We believe that racism is a general problem on the left, and vanishingly rare on the right. We believe that the left is morally depraved on matters such as abortion. Why must we feed this monster?

Nevertheless, we must not remain innocent bystanders. Let me get my condemnations in:

I condemn the city of Charlottesville, in the first place, for planning to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee. This provoked the entire affair, and it was an unprovoked act of aggression against the heritage of an identifiable group among its citizens. It was founded on anti-white prejudice.

I condemn the views of some of the groups that organized the protest against this, if the reports are true that some of them were racist. I read that participants included the KKK. As a Catholic, I obviously oppose the traditional views of the KKK. As a Christian, I necessarily condemn all racism. We must use caution here, however, because it has become standard practice on the left to declare any group on the right “racist.” So we never know when we are being fed false information.

I condemn equally the well-known racist groups on the other side, such as “Black Lives Matter.”

I support the right of all such groups to hold a public demonstration. This is an issue of freedom of speech and of assembly. That said, public demonstrations are generally not helpful or useful in a functioning democracy. And there is no justification for a riot.

I condemn in stronger terms holding “counter-demonstrations.” This looks like an attempt to interfere with another’s free speech. If and when held, such counter-demonstrations must be kept far away from the original demonstration they seek to “counter.”

I condemn, therefore, if the charges are true, the “stand-down” of the Charlottesville police, allowing the two groups to clash. This is exactly the factor that led to the rise of the Nazis in Germany: the police and authorities would not interfere, allowing the stronger gang to work their will.

I condemn the driver of the car, who is, so far as we can see from the available evidence, a murderer. He should be prosecuted for this, as should anyone else who did likewise. I oppose the death penalty, but life in prison seems just.

I condemn those who try to make all the other “right-wing” protestors, who in all probability are entirely innocent of this crime, collectively guilty because they presumably share roughly the same political views as the perpetrator. This is simple bigotry and prejudice.

I condemn those who try to use this to scapegoat. The mayor of Charlottesville, for example, blamed it all on Donald Trump. This ought to be actionable as slander.

I condemn those who have condemned Trump for condemning the apparent hatred on “many sides.” This was the only honourable line to take, in the circumstances.

This was not like a “terrorist” incident, in which violence is unleashed on unsuspecting civilians going about their lives. This was a clash of two opposing sides. That is a different moral equation. Although it does not make escalation okay.