Individualism vs. Community

Nuremberg shows its community spirit.

I think my leftist friend Xerxes has hit upon something in his latest column: the essential difference between the modern North American left and right. He speaks of joining his church choir as a transcendent experience:

“We have stopped being a collection of individuals, and have become a collective organism. A single mind. And in a sense, a single body – we even have to breathe as one, line by line.

We transcend our individuality. And it feels wonderful.”

And he concludes:

“Worship also attempts to connect with the most transcendent reality of all – merging with the divine.

Granted, not everyone in a choir will reason that singing derives from a universal desire for transcendence. But they all know intuitively they’re part of a community.”

And that's probably the key to it all. To a leftist, this sense of losing the individual in community is a self-evident good. After all, it transcends “selfishness.” So it partakes of the divine. The group is divine.

But any rightist reads that first sentence with horror, and thinks of the tight coordination of the Nazi Nuremberg rallies or the North Korean mass choreographed displays in sports stadia. The solidarity bred by a choir? Like Jack's choir boys in Lord of the Flies? Community is the danger; individualism is what partakes of the divine. 

Pyongyang shows its community spirit.

And I am here to explain why the left is wrong and the right is right.

Individualism is no more “selfish” than community. Every community, by definition, excludes as well as includes. Not all sentient beings are members, or we would not refer to a community. If, then, the members of that community seek their own mutual interests, they are corporately acting as selfishly as any individual would be who did the same acting alone. So selfishness is unrelated to individualism. Either a group or an individual can act either selfishly or unselfishly.

At the same time, individualism means taking responsibility. If you surrender that moral responsibility to a community, and defer to their judgement, you are waiving any ability to act morally. You are, on the other hand, perfectly able to act immorally: if you do something immoral as a member of a group, you are still individually responsible. You cannot say you were “only following orders.” But if, conversely, you help the poor only because you see others doing it, or because it improves your social position, it is no longer a moral act. 

Jonestown shows its community spirit.

This is why “Community,” losing your individuality in the group, is in fact traditionally considered one of the great temptations to sin. “The world, the flesh, and the devil.” Following the social consensus, the community, is “the world.” First named.

Community was the whole idea behind Fascism. That's what the symbol of the fasces was meant to represent. And, of course, community was also the whole idea behind Communism, as the name declares. It was the community of the day who put Jesus to death. A sense of community is, in turn, the underlying essence of all racism, all discrimination, all prejudice. It is the reaction to one "not in our group."  Communitarianism has produced the worst human evils in history.

Community is indeed a human need, or at least a natural human want. Just like food and sex. Accordingly, we legitimately seek community. There is nothing wrong with that. But we do not idolize it, any more than we should food or sex. Bad things then quickly happen.

The important thing is that, when we seek community, we seek it on the basis of morality; we seek to belong only to groups engaged in moral behaviour. And retain our individual judgement.

Selma shows its community spirit.

Science Denial

It's really not that complicated.

It is fashionable these days on the left bank of the river to claim that those on the right are “science deniers.”

Which I deny.

This is an odd charge coming from the pot.

It is based, it seems on the fact that folks on the right tend not to accept the concept of global warming as popularly framed: a need for governments to act urgently to stop the planet from warming. Yet it is fraudulent to call this an attack on science. Nobody who opposes the climate change agenda denies science. Their objection is that the science does not justify the panic—that, in sum, the position of the left is unscientific.

It is at least some people on the left, on the other hand, who have indeed dismissed science itself. When you argue relativism, and cultural relativism, that is a denial of science, for science is a part of culture and is therefore relative. Its claims to truth, like all claims to truth, must be false and purely relative. Science, to the postmodernists, is a “social construct.” To the feminists, it is a “tool of the patriarchy,” maliciously designed not to work for women. Nobody on the right is making such claims. Nobody on the right has entered Time’s “post-truth” society. It is only on the left.

And in detail:

The left in general denies that human life begins at conception, and insists that a human embryo is “just a clump of cells.” This is scientifically nonsense. The science is clear; a human life begins at conception. From that point on, you have a genetically distinct human being, with all the programming present to become whatever he or she will become. And he is not going to turn into a cancer or a kangaroo.

Which means, not incidentally, that human beings are not programmed by Microsoft.

The left denies that average IQ can differ by sex or race. It objects to anyone even hinting at this as “racism.” Affirmative action programs are based on a denial of this fact. But of course, as a scientific fact, it can and does. That you do not want it to cannot change the science, here or anywhere else. Caucasians are smarter on average than Africans, East Asians are smarter than Caucasians. Jews are smarter than other Caucasians. And the Katzes are smarter than other Jews. Except maybe the Liebermans. A pure meritocracy is going to mean men, Jews, Asians, and Caucasians dominate at the higher levels. Anything else is unjust to individuals and to races, and against the common good.

The problem in this instance is that, because the left wants to deny the existence of God, they cannot accept the real doctrine of human equality. It means that God created all men as equal in moral value, equal in his eyes. They have to pretend that “equality” is a scientific issue, or they feel that it does not exist.

So they falsify science to suit their politics.

Feminism is guilty of ignoring the real differences between men and women in insisting that they have a right to do all the same jobs in equal numbers. Some of these differences are physical, and so plain to science. Men are taller on average than women, and this can be a legitimate job requirement. Men are physically stronger than women. Women have physical advantages too, but it does not come up, because nobody protests if women dominate a profession. Relaxing requirements so that more women can be soldiers, or police, or fire fighters, is not equity. It is science denial, fair to no one, and a danger to the general public.

The left denies science when they insist that gender is independent of sex. The science is clear: if you have an X and a Y chromosome in the 23rd pair, you are a man. If you have an X and an X, you are a woman. The left denies this, and denies the right of anyone else to say or believe this, and holds that you can be whatever sex you want to be, regardless of any physical evidence. Not just that men can be women if they want, and women can be men: New York City now officially recognizes 31 genders. Australia recognizes 33. Facebook allows for 58.

Ladies and gentlemen, if I might be so bold: gender is a grammatical concept, and really cannot change your dangly bits. English, happily, has not just two, but three genders for your use: he, she, or it.

It’s your choice.

Go for it.