Guest Post by The Zman
One of the basic errors the so-called conservatives made when dealing with their Progressive betters is to assume the Left has a rational plan. The Buckleyites always started from the assumption that there was some logical plan behind the liberal schemes, so they spent a lot of time to trying to abductively arrive at the motivation. The Right spent most of their time making well reasoned arguments against what they assumed was the true motivation of the Left. The result was the Left won every battle in the culture war.
This post from an English professor at Emory University about the logical ends of diversity is a rare example of someone noticing the flaw in this approach. He starts by doing what no one on the conventional Right dares, and that is admit defeat.
Conservatives, libertarians, traditionalists, and classical liberals need to get clear on something: the ideological contests are fading. What Irving Kristol famously said in his 2001 Bradley Lecture, “We in America fought a culture war, and we [conservatives] lost,” applies well to higher education. Conservatives fought wars over multiculturalism, Western Civilization, affirmative action, the Academic Bill of Rights, and political bias in hiring, and we lost every time. The educators have no reason to debate ideas, much less ideology. None of those old issues are up for discussion.
(It should be said that Kristol noted that conservatives still had some influence in one theater of American life, religion, but that exemption is irrelevant to the 21st-century campus.)
You can tell ideology is a settled matter by the way in which faculty and administrators handle the core terms—diversity, inclusion. No moral or conceptual examination of those terms ever takes place. Liberals and leftists mouth them without even pondering what they mean save for the simple-minded aspiration of “more women in science” or “more blacks among the leadership.” The only rejoinder conservatives have is, “What about the diversity of thought and opinion?” to which the educators respond, “Oh, yes, that’s good, too,” then proceed on what they were thinking before. When it comes to diversity, everyone’s a bureaucrat.
He then points out the inherent irrationality of the diversity rackets, at least on the college campus.
Now, diversity means just that: getting more underrepresented people in place. That’s all. The campus managers don’t think about what will happen then. Diversity among the personnel—that is, more proportionate representation of all “underserved” identities—is an end in itself. If you asked a dean what diversity is for, what purpose it serves, he wouldn’t have an immediate answer. He spends so much time in a habitat of tautology (“diversity is good for . . . diversity”) that the very question stumps him until he remembers blather from the Old Times about diverse perspectives and educational benefits and repeats it like a ventriloquist’s dummy. But don’t try pressing him on it. He doesn’t want to talk about it. The self-evident good of diversity has long been established, and he clings to it like a Catholic does his rosary.
The professor does not have the courage to point out the obvious. Replacing capable white people in college positions with non-whites, reduces the quality of the staff. It is not so obvious in the humanities or social sciences, where much of the work has been nonsense for a long time. In the STEM fields, it is a recipe for disaster. Any effort to scale up the diversity rackets popular on campus, to society as a whole, is a recipe for rolling back a millennium of human progress. Without white men, there is no modern world.
At the end, the professor suggests an answer whites should use when asked by a white interviewer about diversity. It’s good advice, only if you know going in you will not be selected because you are white. It would be fun to point out to the diversity spewing white person that the best thing they can do for diversity is quit their job. It is, however, an example of that old habit of the Right. The professor thinks such a “gotcha” response will result in the great Progressive awakening, when the blindfold will drop from Lefty’s eyes.
It is why the Left in America went from one victory to the next in the culture war. They never faced an adversary willing to fight them on their own terms. The American Left has always been a spiritual movement. Talking a lefty believer out of their beliefs is as rational as talking a Muslim out of his faith. No one ever argues that the solution to violent Islam is a well reasoned argument with facts and examples. Even the dullest American understands that this is not how religions work. By definition, faith is not about facts.
American Progressivism grew out of the Puritanism associated with the founding stock of New England. Reform movements of the 19th century all had their roots in New England Christianity. Just read the writings of abolitionists and the Christian foundation is plainly obvious. Then in the 20th century, as Norman Podhoretz explained, Jewish intellectuals embraced Progressivism as their religion. The Left lost its Christianity, but it remained a spiritual movement that became more intense, more exotic and esoteric.
It is an important lesson to learn from the failure of the American Right, in their 20th century fight with the Left. They lost because they never understood the enemy. They invested all of their time conjuring an enemy they could beat with facts and reason, while the Left went about destroying the enemies they had in their path. It’s not a mistake that a new alternative can afford to make. You don’t beat a moral order with reason. You defeat it by attacking it on moral grounds, while offering an alternative moral framework.
“Without white men, there is no modern world.” Nothing could be more factual.
Not sure if Z-man realizes what he is (by default) acknowledging there, or whether he did so inadvertently or on purpose.
Regardless, I was thinking something along those lines the other day: If the U.S. Constitution was set-up to facilitate political, economic, and religious freedom – then wouldn’t an ideal system designed to control the masses, incorporate those very same elements?
And how would such a system take hold? Perhaps by combining opposites through a twisted sort of immoral ecumenicalism: law plus corruption, androgyny, race by means of political correctness, and transhumanism (tech + life); all on the way toward a great technological singularity.
No wonder the left is so confounding to the logical. The Snowflakes are, at once, upset about children being separated from their parents at the border AND Judge Kavanaugh, who might threaten the freedom of children’s mothers from choosing separation in the womb. It’s a matter of faith. That’s all.
Even so, who says leftist’s theological premises should even be considered; let alone accepted? Who?
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@Uncola
You said,
“: If the U.S. Constitution was set-up to facilitate political, economic, and religious freedom – then wouldn’t an ideal system designed to control the masses, incorporate those very same elements?”
The U.S. Supreme Courts interpretation of the 14th Amendment thanks to a barrage of transnational corporation’s lawsuits arguing on the interpretation of the term , CITIZEN created in the 14th Amendment (referred to as one of the slave amendments) IS a major reason the system is bent towards a NEO FEUDAL state.
This same legal understanding was used in CITIZENS UNITED VS. THE United States ruling that removed the political contribution caps in place at the State level on the basis that it was infringing on corporation’s freedom of speech.
By the way, this is the same reasoning used to lease your rights to you as though they are privileges and it “unalienable” natural, God-given rights you’re born with.
“You don’t beat a moral order with reason. You defeat it by attacking it on moral grounds, while offering an alternative moral framework.”
In other words, morality and reason are separate, and you defeat one irrational morality with another irrational morality. I don’t want to live in the kind of world where Zman “wins,” not that he ever will.
That is a very astute point, Robert. Morality divorced from reason (i.e. “immorality”) is the problem. Z-man would have been more correcter 🙂 had he stated:
“You don’t beat a moral order solely with reason.”
In other words, if the Leftists are using children at America’s southern border to manipulate emotions for purposes of making illegal immigration more palatable to the sheeple, than another moral argument should be presented to defeat that nefarious scheme:
http://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/news/u-s-national-news/2849-breaking-news-huge-child-sex-trafficking-ring-exposed-by-trump-zero-tolerance-border-policy
I stick with rule 5..
While it might be better strategy in mid-term to argue with idiots on their level, in the long run the opposition will likely to win by beating the Buckleys of the world with experience. That is the real end game anyways for the Marxists. Someone still needs to be the adult in room…The Left wants to burn the whole thing to the ground, one way or the other. In that way Buckley was wrong to treat his opposites as adults. Still there is yet a better path.
The reason for the phenomena that is Jordan Peterson is he hits them hard where it hurts. I haven’t read the latest 12 rules. Still I do wonder if it is just moar than a coincidence that the Good Doctor has same number of rules for his flock as Saul Alinsky had for his..
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I wonder..
Peterson has just taken the Post Modernist rules and pointed the gun back at the Marxists.. It is same formula being used by Donald Trump and a host of other youtube celebrities…
It is why Trump is President and the rest are becoming famous..
One I like is Bearing from downunder in Oz..
Very funny fellow..
So best course is have a yuk or two that appeal to adults in room.
You don’t beat the Left. They never surrender nor admit defeat. You banish the Left or separate from them and keep them the hell out of your new environment.
“Without white men, there is no modern world.” – That’s the point. They don’t like modernity or the modern world. They believe in the concept of the “noble savage.” Those charming negroes and assorted brown people have the “real culture.” Not the wonder bread culture of white people. The mud people live with an “authenticity.” Don’t bother telling liberals that these same people slaughtered thousands of their own in human sacrifice.
This does indeed come from 2nd wave revivalism. However, it doesn’t come from Calvinism, but palagean filth of works based Christianity. Can anyone argue that Methodists, the same people who gave us both Hillary Clinton and George W Bush aren’t the worst people on earth?
Also, Buckley was overrated. I once sam him debate John Galbraith in person before they both croaked. Not only did he not put Galbraith away he appeared to throw the game. Buckley only liked conservatism because in 1960 it was a playing field of five. I doubt he was a true believer.
Is also interesting to see how the media uses photos to demonstrate the propagandic moral perspective on those invading the U.S. illegally:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Immigrant-children-held-in-shelters-They-told-13077041.php
“The phone, the TV and the news of the world
Got in the house like a pigeon from hell
Threw sand in our eyes and descended like flies
And put us back on the chain
Oh Oh back on the chain gang.”
Do leftists want to be happy? What makes them happiest? Joining up with other leftists in protest of those who oppose their virtuous ideals? It’s a big club and you ain’t in it, as Carlin once observed. Like all clubs it is an exclusive club however large, and one member knows another on sight and is thrilled by the cohesion and sense of belonging. When it comes to marching down the street and feeling the full foxhole comradery, our brave leftists can even idealize themselves. Narcissism is the real drug of choice for leftists and virtue signaling creates a consistent high.
Leftists’ justification for their agendas are not condensed digests of historical consequences, scientific experiment, nor even common sense. Justification is emotional and conveyed in a sentence, a slogan, or a protest sign. It is a moral high-ground they seek but not for morality, but instead for self-aggrandizement and for membership in a movement that requires of them no self-examination. In the moment, all is free, all is rewarding, there’s no accountability, and there’s someone to hate to distract them from any internal dialogue, from any doubt about who is right and who is wrong.
The problem for leftists, though, is that thinking cannot be divorced from destiny. What can we suppose is the correlation between reason-based thinking and favorable outcomes, as compared to the correlation between surface-based thinking and unfavorable outcomes? The more time to take samples the closer the correlations get to a perfect one would be the way to bet.
One might conclude that though leftists may desire happiness, their constant crusading, posturing, and lazy thinking delivers something more like seething anger, disappointment, misery, and an unnamed, fiercely avoided sense of brittleness. In certain enclaves and even countries they will have much to cheer as they together can pass laws and regulations in accordance with their biases, but then fall to pieces when their opposition lands a left hook to the midsection by undoing what they have done for reasons incomprehensible and/or loathsome to them.
Why do leftist say things like, “I want to help my fellow man?” What a grand ambition! What better sentiment could there be? But do they ever see the inconsistency of that sentiment? Why not fight them by making them see it? Instead of reasoning with them the killing effect of minimum wage laws on the young, tell them they are unfeeling, that they don’t care about the suffering of the young, that they only care about their posturing, that it’s a shame they have the power to enact such laws that cause so much pain among young people.
They can’t be reached by addressing their reasoning, but to tell them they have no empathy for anyone but themselves hits them where they live. Tell them they are missionaries who are not happy until everyone is sharing their mission, which only they can define. Tell them that is not helping their fellow man but degrading him and not allowing him to find his own way.
Say to the leftist that disadvantaged black women by the thousands have protected themselves from rape, robbery, and death with Saturday Night Specials and to deprive them of the right to defend themselves and their children in their own apartments is shameful in the extreme. Say to the leftist that while she may live in a safe neighborhood where break-ins are rare, those black women they profess to care about have no other recourse than to arm themselves. The leftist will trot out every kind of defense against what you have said so far, but you won’t argue the points at all. You will just express disappointment in the leftist’s callous aim to further degrade the life of black women. Every one of those poor black women who are raped, robbed, and otherwise made victim to the many aggressors around them can look to the leftist for responsibility for it all. No getting around it, leftists have no hearts and do not care about their fellow man, but care only for their own desires and the burnishing of their armor and thinking of themselves as heroes when they are actually the dogs of hell and the reason millions of people die or live as slaves and wretches when leftists take over a country.
What defeats the leftist whose narcissism leads to terrible outcomes? Can he change? Can his influence be canceled out? Can he be marginalized and sequestered for all time? Can he be named a plague?
If large numbers of people believed that thinking is destiny and that each person creates a good life by thinking well, with the opposite also being true that an individual’s poor thinking creates a miserable life, what would happen to leftists who espouse solutions to problems that are known to create unhappiness and a destiny no one in his right mind would desire?
Why not just say with every breath to a leftist that he is narcissistic, his thinking is shallow, he wants to be the center of the universe without regard to the harm he causes other people, and he and his kind should hold no power in society? Would that be enough if repeated over and over that thinking is destiny, that one’s well-being is utterly dependent upon thinking well?
First, kill all the lawyers? No, first, make the study of Emerson’s essay, “Self-Reliance” a mandatory subject at every grade level. Well, there’s the rub: force even for good is force and is bad. But then reading, writing, and arithmetic are requirements. Why not Emerson whose ideas on living were instrumental is defining the American culture for us all, though perhaps many have forgotten?
“It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.
“In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good, — is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher’s Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies, —
“‘His hidden meaning lies in our endeavours; Our valors are our best gods.’
“Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. ‘To the persevering mortal,” said Zoroaster, “the blessed Immortals are swift.'”
Makes you wonder if Trump ever read Emerson.