In my review of Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind, I suggested:
What Haidt never quite gets across is that conservatives typically define their groups concentrically, moving from their families outward to their communities, classes, religions, nations, and so forth. ...
In contrast, modern liberals’ defining trait is making a public spectacle of how their loyalties leapfrog over some unworthy folks relatively close to them in favor of other people they barely know ....
As an example of leapfrogging loyalties, an archetypal white liberal would be President Obama's mother, Stanley Ann "They are not my people!" Dunham Obama Soetoro.
In contrast, as an example of the concentric pride typical of a white conservative, consider this 1998 article "In His New Novel, Tom Wolfe Unearths His Southern Roots" by Peter Applebome in the New York Times:
Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. was born in 1930 into an old Virginia family at a time when the Civil War was still as much a part of Richmond as the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue. His father, whose Virginia roots go back to 1710, was an odd Southern hybrid of agronomist, teacher and businessman who taught at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, edited a publication called The Southern Planter and ran a company, Southern States Cooperative, that became a Fortune 500 company. His mother, Helen Perkins Hughes Wolfe, came from an old Virginia family as well. ...
Wolfe strayed from the steamy Eden of his youth, but his friends say that to understand his work -- the (dare one say?) cavalier detachment from the passing parade; the acerbic skewering of most elements of modernism from art to architecture; the conservatism about politics, art and race; the withering disdain for what he calls the think-alike "intellectual etiquette" of liberal Manhattan -- one need only think of Wolfe not as dandy or New Journalist or satirist, but as Virginian.
"It's what he's all about," said Ed Hayes, a Manhattan lawyer who says he is the model for Killian, the defense lawyer in Wolfe's first novel, "The Bonfire of the Vanities." "Tom doesn't talk about this stuff publicly, but he has this Scotch-Irish sense of honor, of duty, of family, about masculinity.
"He's the grandson of a Confederate rifleman and grew up with the sense of the Lost Cause, of glorious doomed charges at Gettysburg, of a sense of personal honor and what constitutes masculinity that has largely been rejected by the urban intellectual elite of the Northeast."
In fact, Wolfe went on to spell out the concentricity of a small boy's conservative pride explicitly:
And Wolfe grew up with a sense of entitlement so profound that each night when he got down on his knees to pray, he began by thanking God for the miraculous gift of his place of birth.
"I used to think of it every night," he said, as he sipped his tomato ("ta-MAH-to") juice with a dash of salt and pepper. "First, I thanked God for having been born in America, which was obviously the greatest country on earth. I was pretty dead right on that. And in what was obviously the greatest state, because more presidents came from Virginia than anywhere else. And from the greatest city in the greatest state in the greatest country, because it was the capital of Virginia. Just think of all the people not fortunate enough to be born in Richmond, Va."
He paused a moment to contemplate that injustice for a moment and realized he had not fully conveyed his enthusiasm.
"Oh," he added, "and I also thought I lived in the best location in the greatest city because from my window, when the state fair was in town, I could see all the fireworks. How many children could say that? I can see now that I had -- what's the word? -- literally an egocentric view of the world. But it wasn't all that far from the truth."
So, in this model, the emotional foundations of conservatism are boyish, and liberalism adolescent.
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81 comments:
If only more people felt like Wolfe, coastal Californa wouldn't be so crowded.
Steve,
The (a?) narrative in this post--and I cannot tell if it is yours, because the post is too subtle--doesn't quite hold together.
The values attributed to Wolfe of a sense of honor and duty can be at odds with the concentric circle model of Me-Family...etc that is posited here. Honor and duty often (always?) entail abiding by principles rather than particularism.
I can see now that I had -- what's the word? -- literally an egocentric view of the world.
I felt the same way as a child. I remember thinking how amazing it was that out of all the people on the planet, I was lucky enough to have been born a white, male, Catholic living in Washington DC, the most powerful city in the most powerful country in the world. My parents were the two smartest people in the world, my dog was the best dog in the world, and my house was the most wonderfully furnished in the world.
Safeway was the best possible grocery store because that's where my Mom always shopped. Station wagons were the best type of vehicle on the road because that's what my Dad always bought.
(If it weren't for that damn little sister, my life would have been perfect...)
It might just be the way a child's mind works.
"of a sense of personal honor and what constitutes masculinity that has largely been rejected by the urban intellectual elite of the Northeast."
These same values have also been largely rejected by the Northeastern white collar middle class as well, especially compared to the South and the Mountain West. I had the same conversation with a business associate from the outer Philly burbs who told me how much he loved the South, and agreed that Southern men were typically more valorous and straight-shooting than Yankees. Hunter Thompson described this sort of common sense unique to southerners as "redneck logic", and it made perfect sense to me after growing up in Tennessee.
A Southern man is still "unreconstructed" compared to his economic class peers from the Northeast and Upper Midwest. But with the influx into the South from the North, that is slowly changing too.
Joseph Sobran used to write that liberal thinking's fatal flaw was expecting people to care more about strangers than about their own flesh and blood. He said such thinking would never prevail, because it went against human nature.
Caring about strangers more than your own only works if the strangers in question are very much like you and yours. Swedes handing over 80% of their income so that oldies of the same ilk as Mom and Dad could have an agreeable cottage by the sea in their retirement didn't rankle the fair minded. Handing over the vast majority of one's hard earned scratch so that Abdul and his friends can laze around council flats and chase after one's sister doesn't appear to be working out as well.
I remember thinking how amazing it was that out of all the people on the planet, I was lucky enough to have been born a white, male, Catholic living in Washington DC, the most powerful city in the most powerful country in the world. My parents were the two smartest people in the world, my dog was the best dog in the world, and my house was the most wonderfully furnished in the world....
It might just be the way a child's mind works.
Why do we disparage these feelings of pride and serenity as "child-like" or "adolescent"? Shouldn't self-esteem and a sense of rootedness to and satisfaction with local land and ways be seen as healthy?
How much of our negative attitude toward satisfaction with one's identity is a consequence of the cultural criticism that has dominated the country in the past 60 years, the pathologizing of all things that lead to fitness and happiness? How much as been an attempt to create self-doubt in the American people, do cause them to stutter and lose and step, to demoralize them?
I dunno... conservatives seem to care more about Jews(even in Israel) than whites. I suppose one could argue that white cons have been hoodwinked into thinking Jews are 'our people' against all those 'muzzies', but the reality is that Jews don't like conservatives.
Btw, what's with the sex-selective abortion opposing Congressman caring so much about blacks and yellows? Is he leapfrogging?
Joseph Sobran used to write that liberal thinking's fatal flaw was expecting people to care more about strangers than about their own flesh and blood. He said such thinking would never prevail, because it went against human nature.
This isn't really true. It's like saying that "laws" will never prevail because they go against human nature. People, at least many European peoples, appear to have a strong inborn inclination to privilege rules and duties. If everyone does it, everyone wins. See the Prisoners Dilemma.
Caring about strangers more than your own only works if the strangers in question are very much like you and yours.
Not true. Caring about strangers works if they reciprocate. They can reciprocate for many reasons, including innate inclinations (we see this in many Northern Europeans) or authority (laws, etc.).
Jews are certainly conservative in this sense regardless of their politics. I've read that the Ashkenazi are so inbred that any two random Jews are as closely related as third or fourth cousins by DNA. Member of the Tribe indeed.
"Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order...
To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind..."
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution
http://www.bartleby.com/24/3/4.html
I like hbd* chicks view that a certain amount of out-breeding is necessary before individualism and individual rights can replace the extended family as the basis of one's values and world view. Obviously individualism is not incompatible with patriotism or nationalism, as witness American history. The problem begin when less out-bred population groups are invited in, whose loyalties and values are more tribal and clan based. Assimilation takes time, and in the meantime . . . well, we're living in the meantime.
If conservatism is boyish what does that say about conservative women?
generally despise their own order...
"Order" as used here means what?
"If conservatism is boyish what does that say about conservative women?"
That they like boys?
"In contrast, modern liberals’ defining trait is making a public spectacle of how their loyalties leapfrog over some unworthy folks relatively close to them in favor of other people they barely know ...."
Here's a perfect example of that. Here is a British guy, who wrote a book about Buchanon, trashing his own people and praising the Muslims.
Just view minute 54 thru min 55 of the video attached.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/304496-1
Here's a perfect example of that. Here is a British guy, who wrote a book about Buchanon, trashing his own people and praising the Muslims.
Buchanon? Thats not you is it Whiskey?
I grew up on the upper west side of manhattan and still think it's the best place in the world, although I can't afford to live there and so now live 1 mile away. I can see this explaining why I became a conservative, even if the UWS is not, itself, a particularly conservative environment.
Anyone who really loved Virginia would not live in NY City unless they had to which Wolfe does not. I don't see much Scotch-Irish in Wolfe. Jim Webb is much more in that mold.
I don't like Muslims much, because there is nothing much to like, so no that's not me either.
I'm on the other side of things from Wolfe, being a direct male descendant of a Union Civil War vet, and also a Mexican War vet. Not that my father's side of the family ever had money or social distinction. Still it was MINE and better than say, Mexican, or French, or Jewish heritage. Not that I dislike them, they're just not mine. On my Irish-Catholic mother's side, a grandfather, great grandfather, uncle and cousin were combat Marines and Army, in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. So counting both sides of my family its been in pretty much every war up to Vietnam. None after though.
And yes, the poetry of Burns, of Yeats, and the landscape of Scotland and Ireland, of water and cool air and green things, moves me a guy who grew up in SoCal but always knew what was my heritage and what was not.
Liberals don't understand or even get that you can like and admire elements of a foreign culture: Jazz, Blues, Japanese Zen and Martial Arts, Jewish intellectualism and pop culture contributions, without it being your heritage or putting it above your own. I like eating Thai food, but I don't want to live in Thailand or import Thais here. I can cook it myself, and adapt it to my own tastes. [Which is what Japanese do with foreign cuisine, an admirable trait.]
I would argue that Liberals instead reject their own heritage because they don't like their family, think its not "good enough" and have a bad case of the "more moral" desire to be a Post Christian elect. Utopian universalism replacing what they feel is a "not good enough" heritage. A profound sense of inferiority is at the heart of it.
Wolfe is just another Little Englander, which itself is the Anglo variety of the Celtic Revival epitomized by Yeats and even, Kate Bush (basically quoting Yeats in "Jig of Life"). If you're not Celtic of course, the lyrics and the landscape mysticism don't mean anything.
That is why putting MUSLIMS (really any foreigners) on Celtic soil is an affront to all who went before. There are over 80,000 Muslims in Ireland. For no good reason at all, IMHO.
You can see some of that in Mark Twain aka Sam Clemens. He loathed the superstition that tormented him as a boy in Hannibal MO, where he was the son of some considerable gentry. He lived in NEW ENGLAND of all places, after serving (briefly) as a Confederate soldier before deserting (like many in MO, Mississippi, and TN). He even wrote a book about a Yankee in King Arthur's court. Twain's entire literary life was basically getting even for being tormented by superstition and religious beliefs (in folk Christianity that God was out to punish him for swearing and such).
Wonder what Wolfe thinks of the black-run hyper-violent hellhole Richmond is today? Jackson, Lee, Davis and Stuart gave it their best shot, I guess.
I grew up on the upper west side of manhattan and still think it's the best place in the world.
Why?
Is Jim Webb nuts?
If leapfrogging loyalties are adolescent, they are only adolescent because that's the period where people start venturing out and exploring the media and pop culture - which in our present era promotes leapfrogging loyalties.
I would submit that the conservative type loyalties are more simply the natural state of human affairs, a state that has been the case throughout most (all?) of human history. Do PC values really have precedent? Besides the Greek decline and their embrace of homosexuality, I'm struggling to think of one. Usually suicidal movements are notably rare - they tend to weed themselves out of existence. People go out of their way NOT to copy them.
While chivalry took moral posturing to an absurd length that culminated in the Crusades, that was putting God above kith and kin. Putting other people's kith and kin above your own, not so much. The Crusades also were a legitimate response to the Muslim incursions in previous years.
OT, Steve: Along the lines of a popular theme of yours - rather obvious things that the news media refuses to talk about, let alone think about - how about this weekends' Bilderberger meeting. I don't subscribe to the wild conspiracy theories surrounding this group, i.e., that they are some kind of omnipotent, trans-generational cabal that directs history from behind the screen.
Never-the-less, it is a periodic meeting of several hundred of the richest, most influential people in the world. And although they may not be drawing up sinister plans like the council of S.P.E.C.T.R.E in a Bond film, yet people like that probably aren't just meeting for purely social reasons either. You'd think that some respectable journalists would find it worthy of some reportage. Yet, strangely, they never do, at least not until this year, and that was only because Drudge was prodding them.
liberalism isn't just adolescent, it is female adolescent.
Boys grow up to inherit the family name and continue it. Adolescent girls yearn to leave and find their place in their new family with their new identity as Mrs.
To everyone here strutting about, disparaging "leapfrogging loyalties":
Have you ever heard of a concept called the rule of law? That's all about leapfrogging loyalties rather than particularist normativity (if particularism can even be called a norm). I guess you don't think much of the rule of law either. Thing is, the rule of law is often closely associated with conservatism and typically seen as on of the great attributes of European civilization.
Sailer said:
What Haidt never quite gets across is that conservatives typically define their groups concentrically, moving from their families outward to their communities, classes, religions, nations, and so forth. ...
In contrast, modern liberals’ defining trait is making a public spectacle of how their loyalties leapfrog over some unworthy folks relatively close to them in favor of other people they barely know ....
That is partially true, and a valid critique of liberals, but "leapfrogging" is not necessarily a bad thing in certain circumstances. One of the reasons we have free markets is precisely because policy makers are smart enough to neglect the "concentric" parochial interests of local monopolists and tax hounds and implement structures where trade can move over a broad area unhindered by self-serving "localitis." An out-of-state company shipping fruit to Nevada has to pay NEvada taxes but their goods cannot be arbitrarily banned from Nevada just because local "concentric" monopolists want to increase their profits by keeping out competition. They get equal protection under the law.
Likewise conservative Christians "leapfrogged" the interests and profits of their neighbors who sought to preserve slavery, and advocated liberation of those under the bondage of slavery- people they "barely knew." Good thing for Western civilization that they did. It is to the credit of Western Civ that such leapfrogging happened, for none outside the West actually had anything remotely similar to such abolition of the brutal institution of slavery. Likewise white conservative Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 over the objections of various fellow white people, because it was the right thing to do, and it helped neutralize a painful propaganda weapon wielded by the Soviets during the COld War. Both the white Christians and the Republicans sacrificed "concentric" solidarity with fellow whites to achieve a better overall outcome.
Wolfe sez:
And in what was obviously the greatest state, because more presidents came from Virginia than anywhere else. And from the greatest city in the greatest state in the greatest country, because it was the capital of Virginia. Just think of all the people not fortunate enough to be born in Richmond, Va."
Point taken by Wolfe, but on the flip side Virgina was fortunate for those who were the "RIGHT" color and class. There are very good reasons to NOT be living in Virginia in the past. Those who were on the "approved list" had not problems. But if you were like Mildred Loving and her husband, you had state police breaking down your door at midnight, arresting you for the "crime" of being married.
WHat is interesting is that in Virginia interracial marriages were common the the first half of the 17th century under the practical live and let live indentured servant era. This changed as a brutal slave regime was progressively inaugurated. Assorted "honorary whites" like Dinesh Desouza, who came along decades after the dirty Civil Rights struggle was done, never had to undergo something like this with his white wife Dixie. D'souza and Dixie spent many years living comfortably in the aforementioned Virginia, a state that not only in the past banned such marriages as his to whites, but in the past, had also imprisoned and/or exiled people for interracial marriages. Presumably, a "concentric" D'souza would have no problem if he and Dixie were denied housing in the area of their choice by Realtors or private sellers, or had their children shunted to a "colored" school as part of the indirect or de facto fallout of that private discrimination, or were locked out of their booked honeymoon suite by privately employed hotel owners or clerks.
Yes Virginia was a fine place, but only for the "right people" in past eras.
I would submit that conservatism is simply masculine and liberalism, feminine. More to come after I sleep
That conservative/liberal antithesis - conservatives are into concentric spheres of loyalty, liberals are into leapfrogging - is it true? I mean, in actual behavior? It's one of the main talking points of the paleo/alt right, but I don't think I've ever seen it rigorously stated, much less tested.
For instance, some on the right make a big deal about loyalty to their race. But loyalty to one's race, in America, is often disloyalty to one's polity, which is multiracial. So are liberals leapfrogging over racial loyalty, or are alt/paleo conservatives leapfrogging over "political" loyalty (patriotism)? In specific, concrete, non-trivial instances, "concentric" is not a given, as you'd think from reading the talking points in articles like this. "Concentric" is exactly what's being disputed.
Even when "concentric" is pretty clear, for instance in family versus polity, who's more loyal to the inner sphere? Obviously, all liberals behave according to "concentric" spheres of loyalty, in the sense that they're more loyal to family than to humanity, etc. But even beyond that: Who's more liable to sacrifice their son, husband, etc., for the good of the polity - i.e., to send him to war - liberals or conservatives? (If you like, consider a just war where vital national interests are truly at stake.) It's a truism nowadays that liberals live more by "family values" than do conservatives. In that sense, aren't liberals more "loyal" to the inner sphere, the nuclear family?
Leapfrogging = The Rule of Law
Aaron in Israel:
"In specific, concrete, non-trivial instances, "concentric" is not a given, as you'd think from reading the talking points in articles like this. "Concentric" is exactly what's being disputed."
Indeed. That which we find most interesting, that which we most want to argue about, is that which is most arguable.
Apparently, this is the most boring insight in the history of philosophy. I can't figure out who came up with it first because I've never found anybody interested is much interested in the topic enough to have given it a name. I got the idea from something at the back of Pinker's "The Blank Slate" where he talks about how the famous tragedies of literature typically involving within-family conflicts where kin selection and resource competition are in fairly equal balance. But I don't think Pinker really generalized the concept until I pointed it out to him during the Malcolm Gladwell Quarterback Controversy of 2009:
http://takimag.com/article/quibbling_rivalry/#axzz1wWIY6Ovg
Aaron in Israel said...
That conservative/liberal antithesis - conservatives are into concentric spheres of loyalty, liberals are into leapfrogging - is it true? I mean, in actual behavior? It's one of the main talking points of the paleo/alt right, but I don't think I've ever seen it rigorously stated, much less tested. For instance, some on the right make a big deal about loyalty to their race. But loyalty to one's race, in America, is often disloyalty to one's polity, which is multiracial. So are liberals leapfrogging over racial loyalty, or are alt/paleo conservatives leapfrogging over "political" loyalty (patriotism)?
^^You have a point here. During the Cold War, the Soviets made numerous effective propaganda attacks over US racial policies and had a field day with the thuggish methods of Jim Crow regimes. These stinging attacks bedeviled US presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon. Indeed Ike went so far as to broadcase what the US fed govt was doing in the Little ROck crisis over the Voice of America foreign broadcast, to neutralize effective Soviet punches that undermined American cred overseas to speak about "democracy." In addition the US govt underwent numerous embarassing incidents when Third World diplomats tryng to do ordinary business in the leader of the "Free World" were kicked out of, or denied service in Maryland hotels or housing because of their race. Eisenhower invited angry Thord World diplomats to the White House to soothe feelings, (and aid negotiations for bases, trade links or diplomatic support). Kennedy went so far as to urge area realtors to cool their racism- it was embarassing the US internationally. Here indeed is your possible test case where racial loyalty was directly hurting US foreign policy.
It's a truism nowadays that liberals live more by "family values" than do conservatives.
How so? In what way do liberals favor family values more?
Dear Aaron:
I'll try to finish up my answer for you, but I'll save it for a posting or a column rather than put it in the comments.
Luke Lea said...
The problem begin when less out-bred population groups are invited in, whose loyalties and values are more tribal and clan based. Assimilation takes time, and in the meantime . . . well, we're living in the meantime.
The problem you identify is a crucial one- the concentric approach and its tribal/clan affilations may have negative broader effects. The Irish are a case in point, with their self-serving manipulation and monopolism that hindered both free markets and clean, efficient government- two things conservatives presumably want. As one historian below notes, the self-serving clan monopolism favored the foreign and hurt native Americans, not to mention the corruption of the tribal political machines.
"In the city's building trades such as plumbers and the masons, Irish-dominated unions adopted nepotistic membership requirements that kept out new arrivals... Similarly the Irish used their political connections to entrench themselves in both skilled and unskilled city government jobs for policemen, firefighters, rapid transit workers and school teachers, even before these workers had their unions recognized."
"The work taken by Irish men differed from that of Irish women in some respects, however. Irish men were heavily tied up with the political machine. They could secure employment in municipal services, with the machine a powerful intermediary. This is not to say that Irish women had no connection with the machines in their search for bread. Some Irish women, usually American-born daughters of Irish immigrants were able to teach school through the help of the machine, and as the city expanded its educational services, these women benefited... But for men, connections to politicians, the ability to trade a vote for a job, helped them secure employment on large-scale construction projects, a labor sector that supported many New York Irish families. When in 1865 the New York State Supreme Court building was being constructed, Irish men made up the vast majority of those drawing a paycheck. Other heavily Irish male occupations also depended on the machine and on the governmental process.
As early as 1855 Irish men were the largest group of the cartmen of New York, including those that specialized in doing city work on sanitation, landfill road projects and the like. To be a private cartman one required a license; to work for the municipal government in particular one needed good connections. Even before the massive influx of the feminine Irish in 1843, the Democrat-dominated Common Council gave a large number of market licenses to Irish men, much to the chagrin of native
American entrepreneurs."
--FROM: Bayor and Meagher 1996, The New York Irish, 96-97
Mr. Sailer, I'm not sure I was very clear, given the first paragraph of your reply. My point is that you don't seem all that interested in the topology, so to speak, of "concentric." You take it as given: "my brother and I against my cousin," etc. Interestingly, you don't seem interested in arguing that which is most arguable.
But it might be that you understood me perfectly well the first time. If so, then this follow-up comment is in horrible taste, and I apologize for it.
"In what way do liberals favor family values more?"
Maybe I should have said white liberals. That's who we're all talking about, anyway. I don't know the statistics, but here's the story we here nowadays: whites in the upper classes (say, upper-middle and above), who tend to be liberal, are more likely to get married and to stay married, much less likely to have children out of wedlock, more likely invest strongly (in a bourgeois sense) in their children, more likely to go to church, and so on, than are whites in the lower classes, who tend to be conservative. I'm assuming that's true, since I've never seen anyone dispute it. My point is that you could call much of this family loyalty: Liberals are more loyal within the "most inner" concentric circle, while conservatives leapfrog.
Dear Aaron:
I understand the issues, I'm just going to address them at length somewhere else than in the comments.
But, in short, think about the word "leapfrogging" in terms of the example of Dana Milbank's views on (more or less) female infanticide. We're not talking about a tragic conflict of loyalties in which Dana can't decide between where to draw the line or between two incommensurable values. He's not appealing to a higher principle that we should be loyal to in which female infanticide is, when we stop and think about it, right.
Instead, he's mostly just (phrased negatively) reacting in "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" manner of time immemorial.
But, as a conventional 21st Century liberal, he would think of it in more positive, more heroic terms: he's leaping over the petty mores of western civilization, such as not killing babies just because they are girls, and their deplorable defenders, to embrace The Other. Dana is, when you look at it from the right angle, a Hero.
Aaron says:
" My point is that you could call much of this family loyalty:"
It's not a secret that white liberal elites, while they may talk like the Dalai Lama, tend to behave like Amy Chua.
The problem with enforced hypocrisy is not just the one Charles Murray identified -- the less clever believe what they are told -- but the bigger issue that policy discussions are highjacked by the interests of those who control the discourse.
"whites in the upper classes (say, upper-middle and above), ... tend to be liberal ... whites in the lower classes, ... tend to be conservative"
No.
Curious if you are familiar w/ Roger Scruton's 1995 essay "Oikophobia and Xenophilia" which mines a similar vein.
Also, I hesitated to say the previous 50 times but I think you're laboring under a limited stereotype of patrician Virginians based on your Tom Wolfe fandom. Through being a friend of her son I knew the photographer Sally Mann a bit (the controversial one, for various churchmen and GOP politicos). Her pedigree wouldn't contest well against Wolfe's but she easily exemplifies that crowd/crust, which I'd rank equally as effete and detached, in the court-at-Versailles sense--imagine Robert Penn Warren multiplied by Drew Gilpin Faust--as any "party at Lenny's"
"Likewise white conservative Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 over the objections of various fellow white people, because it was the right thing to do, and it helped neutralize a painful propaganda weapon wielded by the Soviets during the COld War."
Ah, yes, it makes so much sense to let our enemies set our domestic policy. And civil rights legislation has been such an unadulterated boon to cities like Detroit.
To everyone here strutting about, disparaging "leapfrogging loyalties":
I don't see anyone "strutting" here. You do seem to have your panties in a twist about other people having rooted identities, though. I wonder why.
Have you ever heard of a concept called the rule of law? That's all about leapfrogging loyalties rather than particularist normativity (if particularism can even be called a norm). I guess you don't think much of the rule of law either. Thing is, the rule of law is often closely associated with conservatism and typically seen as on of the great attributes of European civilization.
Respecting rule of law doesn't require selling out your own people or repudiating your own culture. You appear to be suggesting that normal human attachments preclude civilization, which is of course nonsense. You seem not to have noticed that the more "universalist" and deracinated we have become in our country, the more tribal and corrupt it gets, and the less rule of law is respected.
I suggest meditating upon the paradox that the ideals of "rule of law", and respecting higher principles of justice and order, actually is a sample of your "particulist normativity" - the norm of a particular people, whom you identified yourself - "European".
And as a matter of fact this ideal was more limited than that, with the British most noted for standards of "fair play" and respect for "the majesty of the law". Southern Europeans, not so much. Some Europeans in their hubris have failed to notice that the whole notion of disinterested justice is profoundly culturally rooted.
Have you ever heard of a concept called the rule of law?
The rule of law is based on enlightened self-interest which in it's essence is concentric.
Leapfrogging or the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' strategy is unenlightened self-interest.
So are liberals leapfrogging over racial loyalty, or are alt/paleo conservatives leapfrogging over "political" loyalty (patriotism)?
In so-called multi-racial societies race IS the nation. America has been a white nation since it's founding. Therefore liberals are the leapfroggers.
I like this boyish/adolescent dichotomy, but it reminds me that P. J. O'Rourke described the liberal mind-set as toddler-like, which is also true in a way. At any rate, this is all linked and riffed on here:
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2012/06/balance-and-moderation.html
Maybe I should have said white liberals. That's who we're all talking about, anyway. I don't know the statistics, but here's the story we here nowadays: whites in the upper classes (say, upper-middle and above), who tend to be liberal, are more likely to get married and to stay married, much less likely to have children out of wedlock, more likely invest strongly (in a bourgeois sense) in their children, more likely to go to church, and so on, than are whites in the lower classes, who tend to be conservative. I'm assuming that's true, since I've never seen anyone dispute it. My point is that you could call much of this family loyalty: Liberals are more loyal within the "most inner" concentric circle, while conservatives leapfrog.
That's a pretty crude analysis. When you compare within classes, upper class conservatives are more likely to be married and etc. than upper class liberals, and lower class conservatives are more likely to be married and etc. than lower class liberals.
Even when you control for race.
-sovaldo M.
Be careful about extrapolating too much about the South from Wolfe. I like his stuff, and he is insightful, but he, not surprising for an upper-middle class town boy, views the region through molasses-tinted shades. I've met other Tom Sawyers/Billy Faulkners with similar problems of objectivity.
Romanticism isn't a bad thing, as people on this thread correctly point out, a little bit of nostalgia is a good thing.
Wolfe's "I am Charlotte Simmons" is a realistic, and sobering, appraisal of college life, but his treatment of Appalachia is unrealistic. Even Wolfe is pretty clear that Charlotte is not a typical girl. I couldn't imagine Wolfe would relish a book on all of Charlotte's contemporaries: the Dakotas, Tanyas, Kims, Dawns and Crystals. But Southern Gothic/Lust in the Dust is a glutted market, so why even go there?
Charlotte Simmons reminded me more of sheltered Evangelical or Catholic girls that I met in college, and who were from the 'burbs, than the gals I grew up with.
Contra Wolfe, Appalachia is not a region beset by outside immorality. There certainly isn't a "mountain code", whatever that means. I think Wolfe got Southerners and Sicilians mixed up.
I never heard of a killing over something sexual related, with the exception of a guy who was hung for murdering a girl over a case of unrequited love, and a murder-suicide over the same cause. No castrations, not for a white man. And this was in a violent place and time.
Mountain people have always been fine with a degree of sexual license unacceptable to Victorians, or honor cultures like the Middle East/Mediterranean. Southern honor wasn't so tied up with female genitalia. If a man had machismo and charisma he didn't lose respect because a daughter brought home a "woods colt."
John C. Campbell, whose work "The Southern Highlander and his Homeland" is a must read, wrote that premarital sexual behavior in the mountains was mammalian, not degenerate; I'd agree. Rednecks are not perverts, they are primitive. They appear to be pedophiles because we decided on the arbitrary age of 18 to mark who is an adult and who isn't.
Campbell's description on pgs. 132-133 about illegitimacy and cohabitation correspond to what I heard in oral history and witnessed myself. But comments about contemporary culture always come with a caveat- meth addicts.
I'd disagree with Campbell on the excuses he gave for unmarried couples, citing isolation and lack of nearby preachers. I heard that excuse growing up,but after doing some genealogy, I noticed illegitimacy did not correlate to geography. It appears to be simply an excuse.
Appalachia is not Wyoming, we've not been a frontier since the 18th century. Preachers were around every corner. If boys and girls could walk 5-6 miles on mountain trails to go to dances and meetings, they could get married.
In fact, camp meetings were notorious for trysts. I had one ancestor who refused to allow his girls, beating them with a stick, to go to the meetings for just that reason. Didn't stop 2 of them from having a number of illegitimate kids, which he helped raise along with some of the by-blows of his old age by his "housekeeper". And lest someone suggest the ancestor was white trash, he was a land-owner, moderately wealthy, who associated with other upper middling farmers.
The kicker about this is that sexual license coexisted with conversational prudishness.
The idea that 'leapfrogging loyalties' equate with the rule of law is nonsense, given the tacit approval of vast lawbreaking such as supporting illegal immigration that these 'leapfrogging loyalties' actually engender. There are a million examples where the liberal moral paradigm doesn't even support equality under the law.
I don't agree that any 'leapfrogging' is occurring though. It's just Jewish morality extending to a certain class of whites (that live in the most Jewish dominated areas, like NYC and Hollywood).
These people aren't 'leapfrogging' over their own kind. They are actively denying that the people they are hostile towards are their own kind at all. Their supposed philanthropy isn't very altruistic. The primary impetus is the eradication of any kind of identity that would separate their domestic enemies and foreigners. They don't leapfrog over the white Americans that they want to be indistinguishable from Mexicans, and to blend together in an undifferentiated global mass. They will never support such a view for their white family, friends, and the fellow travelers within their social class.
The only 'leap' that occurs is the one into the single circle of SWPLdom, which is hostile to anything that is non-SWPL in the exact same way that one is either a Jew or Gentile. SWPLs striving for equality between African peasants and American citizens is no kind of true philanthropy. All that is being said is that they are basically fine with Americans living in African squalor, except for SWPLs themselves. It's morally wrong for a group of non-SWPLs to hold stations of privilege above other groups of non-SWPLs.
Their morality is like that of a benevolent alien race descending upon the earth and making us all their kept servants living in enforced squalor while they alone enjoy the luxuries this world has to offer. All Earthlings are the same when you are looking from orbit. The one-size-fits-all morality of the SWPL is of the same kind as treating all of your pets or beasts of burden basically the same despite not being the same breeds or even species. Their relationship to you, as master is what defines their treatment (which is of course humane, and makes you feel benevolent.) That idea of 'equality' doesn't extend to treating your family members the same as you do your dogs.
The SWPL is the master and the rest of us are to be treated as cattle.
Grover Prosling:
"Yes Virginia was a fine place, but only for the "right people" in past eras."
For the good of the nation we can't be accepting just anybody, else the quality of the population will decline, and with it, civilization. I have standards in personal life and I think we can be assured that so do many people. It is only right to look after the national body similarly.
"In addition the US govt underwent numerous embarassing incidents when Third World diplomats tryng to do ordinary business in the leader of the "Free World" were kicked out of, or denied service in Maryland hotels or housing because of their race. Eisenhower invited angry Thord World diplomats to the White House to soothe feelings, (and aid negotiations for bases, trade links or diplomatic support). Kennedy went so far as to urge area realtors to cool their racism- it was embarassing the US internationally. Here indeed is your possible test case where racial loyalty was directly hurting US foreign policy."
And what of it? It is not embarrassing whatsoever. The national interests come first, not their feelings. They are but the dubious ambassadors of Third World dumps. This Free World is built by us, not by them, and is not for any whining Third World loser.
We are courting them so that their home regions may be retained under our influence and the world not fall under the evils of Communism. Although perhaps our Communists may have a point in that our apparent victory may not have been best for mankind. We may treat them more courteously, but that doesn't entail abandoning existing policy in the national interior. There will be a domestic policy and there will be a foreign. As the liberals like to say, the world is gray, and we must look to context.
"The problem you identify is a crucial one- the concentric approach and its tribal/clan affilations may have negative broader effects. The Irish are a case in point, with their self-serving manipulation and monopolism that hindered both free markets and clean, efficient government- two things conservatives presumably want. As one historian below notes, the self-serving clan monopolism favored the foreign and hurt native Americans, not to mention the corruption of the tribal political machines."
Yes, the Irish.. and the Scots-Irish.
Increasing our concentricness, halting immigration, and breaking and assimilating higher potential immigrants we have not deported are the solutions.
Thus far, liberals have argued for diversity cuz all races are same. But as evidence mounts that races are not the same, I think libs will use the synchronicity argument for diversity. They'll say, of course, races are different and THAT is precisely why we need diversity. It'd be like the story of the long armed man and short armed man. Long armed man gets the fruit and short armed man enables both to eat.
So, libs will say, "Sure, Jews are smarter, and that means they'll create more businesses and create more jobs and pay more taxes and share the wealth with rest of us." And "sure, blacks are better at sports, and so they'll win in sports and share the glory with us at the Olympics. Sure, they're better at funky music and fill our lives with joy." And "sure, Asians are lamer but they make good drones and will do much of the grunt boring work." And "sure, Mexicans are 'boring' but they make good dish washers and grass cutters." Thus, we all gain by integrating diverse talents of differntly talented races.
During the Cold War, the Soviets made numerous effective propaganda attacks over US racial policies and had a field day with the thuggish methods of Jim Crow regimes.
The "thuggish methods of Jim Crow regimes" were almost entirely a fabrication of the mass media, while -- back in the real world -- the thuggish Soviet regime had murdered millions with the complicity of the same mass media.
The effectiveness of the propaganda had little to do with actual expression of racial loyalty. It was mostly a double-whammy from the apparatus of public opinion formation.
whites in the upper classes (say, upper-middle and above), who tend to be liberal, are more likely to get married and to stay married, much less likely to have children out of wedlock, more likely invest strongly (in a bourgeois sense) in their children, more likely to go to church, and so on, than are whites in the lower classes, who tend to be conservative.
Ugh, apples to oranges, gee whiz.
Okay, conservative upper middles are more likely than liberal upper middles to get married and stay married.
Conservative lower middles are more likely than liberal lower middles to get married and stay married.
So, while the proportion of liberals to conservatives varies by income, libs are still less likely than conservatives to get married and stay married.
The "thuggish methods of Jim Crow regimes" were almost entirely a fabrication of the mass media, while -- back in the real world -- the thuggish Soviet regime had murdered millions with the complicity of the same mass media.
Ben,
Anywhere I can read up on the claims you make that "Jim Crow regimes" were part fabrication?
The effectiveness of the propaganda had little to do with actual expression of racial loyalty. It was mostly a double-whammy from the apparatus of public opinion formation.
What does this paragraph mean? What propaganda? Whose racial loyalty?
Southern honor wasn't so tied up with female genitalia. If a man had machismo and charisma he didn't lose respect because a daughter brought home a "woods colt."
Is a "woods colt" always defined as a negro?
The rule of law is based on enlightened self-interest which in it's essence is concentric.
Mind explaining to us how the rule of law is "concentric"?
The Rule of Law is not necessarily a "leapfrogging loyalty," in the sense that Steve probably means it. It doesn't mean you invariably favor, say, an alien people over your own. But neither is it "concentric loyalty." It its ideal form it is loyalty to human agreements and principles. Both the leapfrogging and concentric loyalties discussed here seem to refer to loyalties to particular people.
Yes Virginia was a fine place, but only for the "right people" in past eras.
oh brother, a certain type of conservative will just never get over how virtuous apologizing for dead people makes him...you see back then blacks were badly mistreated, whereas today we can see what great upstanding citizens that civil rights and freedom have made them
@anon 2:31,
"woods colt" means illegitimate child. The term comes from a mare having a colt from an unknown stallion, presumably the mating being done under unsupervised circumstances out in the woods.
aARON SAID:
Maybe I should have said white liberals. That's who we're all talking about, anyway. I don't know the statistics, but here's the story we here nowadays: whites in the upper classes (say, upper-middle and above), who tend to be liberal, are more likely to get married and to stay married, much less likely to have children out of wedlock, more likely invest strongly (in a bourgeois sense) in their children, more likely to go to church, and so on, than are whites in the lower classes, who tend to be conservative. Liberals are more loyal within the "most inner" concentric circle, while conservatives leapfrog.
Well you have a point there as well. Liberals can be accused of hypocrisy on this score. Some conservatives charge that they advocate fulsome abortion, promiscuity, government dependency etc for others, but for themsleves, "limousine liberals" ensure that they DON'T follow their own liberal advocacy for others. They make sure their kids are in well heeled, secure, disciplined, achieving schools, rather than say schools where trendy (but ineffectual) "whole language" and "rain forest math" helps produce dismal results for students. They advocate all sorts of "rights" for hoodlums and thugs in public housing projects, making it hard to get rid of these destroyers of civic life, but would not tolerate said hoodlums and their thuggery in their own well-heeled white neighborhoods. They call for high "redistributionary" taxes on "the rich", but they themselves are pulling down nice incomes and are able to employ a suite of skilled accounting types to ensure that they pay minimize tax payments. They call for even more "compassionate" government spending, but are earning a nice living from the government salaries paid to "administer" compassion. ANd so on, and so on.. On the flip side, some would argue that this liberal hypocrisy is proof of their higher cleverness, hence why liberals according to some reports, post higher IQs than conservatives (Kanazawa 2010).
Anon sez:
Ah, yes, it makes so much sense to let our enemies set our domestic policy.
^^You must be living in some alternative fantasy world. The Soviet Union did not "set" US domestic policy. Since when is ensuring equal opportunity under the law a "Soviet plot"? Is the 14th Amendment a "communist plot?" Lets join the real world shall we.. And Civil Rights policy has been around since the 1800s, long before the SOviet Union appeared to allegedly "set" US domestic policy.
I suggest meditating upon the paradox that the ideals of "rule of law", and respecting higher principles of justice and order, actually is a sample of your "particulist normativity" - the norm of a particular people, whom you identified yourself - "European".
Overstated. The "rule of law" and higher principles of justice and order, is a feature of legal and ethical systems on every continent from ancient times- whether it be the laws of Hammurabi, the courts of the Ethiopian negus, or the judges of ancient China. There is nothing "European" about "respecting higher principles of justice and order" (your own words) at all.
Some Europeans in their hubris have failed to notice that the whole notion of disinterested justice is profoundly culturally rooted.
^DUbious. There is noting at all "European" about "disinterested justice" (your own words) as even basic history shows. Legal rules and guidelines on every continent for example forbid or warn judges against the taking of bribes- and thus perverting justice.
It might just be the way a child's mind works
Raised in a good environment, yes. It's not universal.
How much of our negative attitude toward satisfaction with one's identity is a consequence of the cultural criticism that has dominated the country in the past 60 years, the pathologizing of all things that lead to fitness and happiness? How much as been an attempt to create self-doubt in the American people, do cause them to stutter and lose and step, to demoralize them?
Good questions.
I would argue that Liberals instead reject their own heritage because they don't like their family
Certainly fits with the direction here...
Leapfrogging = The Rule of Law
Yeah, not really. You seem to be confusing universalism with rule of law. Nazis, Jim Crow south, and the Confederacy all liked rule of law.
Third World diplomats tryng to do ordinary business in the leader of the "Free World" were kicked out of, or denied service in Maryland hotels or housing because of their race.
Were they so treated because of the law?
So, libs will say, "Sure, Jews are smarter, and that means they'll create more businesses and create more jobs and pay more taxes and share the wealth with rest of us." And "sure, blacks are better at sports, and so they'll win in sports and share the glory with us at the Olympics. Sure, they're better at funky music and fill our lives with joy." And "sure, Asians are lamer but they make good drones and will do much of the grunt boring work." And "sure, Mexicans are 'boring' but they make good dish washers and grass cutters." Thus, we all gain by integrating diverse talents of differntly talented races.
"Integrating diverse talents of differntly talented races" is hardly a liberal idea. A conservative free-marketer might see such as a good thing. Free markets would most efficiently, on the average, make the most of diverse individual and group talents, without imposing stereotyical straitjackets on either group or individual. And no government bureaucrats need be involved to "supervise" outcomes, or impose things like Jim Crow restrictions to ensure the "proper place" of free market transactors of whatever "race."
The "thuggish methods of Jim Crow regimes" were almost entirely a fabrication of the mass media, while -- back in the real world -- the thuggish Soviet regime had murdered millions with the complicity of the same mass media.
You need a basic lesson in history. The "mass media" did not "fabricate" the killings of hundreds of Chinese in America for such "crimes" as competing with whites economically, nor did they "fabricate" almost a century of well documented fraud and murder perpetrated against blacks in America's Jim Crow south. See Klarman's 2004- From Jim Crow to Civil Rights- there is very little "fabrication" of a brutal history by the "media."
Were they [the Third World Diplomats] so treated because of the law?
There were no official laws requiring segregation in Maryland, but the practice was pervasive, right into the nation's capital. Interestingly, it was a Republican that made a campaign promise to desegregate the nations capital. It was Eisenhower's admin that pressured white businesses and organizations to shape up- from taxicabs to restaurants, to companies that held back long-serving black employees from promotion because they were black, while junior whites with less experience were moved ahead, or that refused to hire blacks altogether. Indeed Ike invited owners of Washington's hotels and theaters to the White House to persuade them to end segregation. Alongside this were initiatives to fully desegregate the armed forces and eliminate job discrimination in the federal workforce. See The Eisenhower Years By Michael S. Mayer. What stopped public accomodations segregation in Maryland ultimately was not concentric goodwill but state legislation that made it illegal. FOllowing upon state legislation was the national Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Grover Prosling:
Overstated.
Not in the context, it ain't.
The "rule of law" and higher principles of justice and order, is a feature of legal and ethical systems on every continent from ancient times- whether it be the laws of Hammurabi, the courts of the Ethiopian negus, or the judges of ancient China.
And they were "particularist" "rules of law", and "justice and order", culturally rooted. None of those people were twisting themselves in knots, and unraveling their own mores, trying to be so "higher order" that they started privileging the customs and laws of the "barbarians" over their own ways, in the name of unmoored abstractions and deracinated universalism. That is where the "leap-frogging" comes in.
(Reading pro-tip: The odds are infinitesimally low that even the stupidest commenter here - which I grant may well be me - is unaware that all human societies have legal and ethical codes. Context, son, context.)
There is nothing "European" about "respecting higher principles of justice and order" (your own words) at all.
There is certainly something "European" about flying so high into the universalist ether, and getting your head so far up your butt in abstractions that you can't even recognize that imported mores are culturally incompatible with, and simply logically contradictory to, your own - and to such an extent that you start actively disadvantaging and outright persecuting your own people, and undermining their codes of law and justice, to truckle to incoming aliens who don't cotton to the local "higher order principles" of social arrangement, all in the name of a "meta higher order", if you will, that nobody but some crazy European is going to take seriously.
G. Prosling: In addition the US govt underwent numerous embarassing incidents when Third World diplomats tryng to do ordinary business in the leader of the "Free World" were kicked out of, or denied service in Maryland hotels or housing because of their race...Here indeed is your possible test case where racial loyalty was directly hurting US foreign policy.
But one wonders how many of the complainants were quite content themselves to act in terms of "particularist" loyalties in their own lives, rather than the universalist principles they were demanding of others? To demand inclusion while reserving the right to exclude is a pretty common, not to say universal, human propensity. You don't make an appeal to universalist principles to a people who aren't susceptible to such appeals.
Sailer adds an interesting insight to Haidt's book (which I recommend every conservative read). The idea of concentric vs. leapfrogging associations deserves a longer treatment. How about it, Steve?
totally unrelated but I think Obama's election has ushered in a wave of miscegnation among young people. it's funny. i'd like to hear steve write on how that will work out. how large the mixed (cory booker/obama) segment of the US be in the future.
"Mercer said...
Anyone who really loved Virginia would not live in NY City unless they had to which Wolfe does not. I don't see much Scotch-Irish in Wolfe. Jim Webb is much more in that mold."
And they both married "out"- Wolfe to a Jewish woman, and Webb to a Vietnamese one.
Yan Shen sez:
Anon sez:
Ah, yes, it makes so much sense to let our enemies set our domestic policy.
^^You must be living in some alternative fantasy world. The Soviet Union did not "set" US domestic policy. Since when is ensuring equal opportunity under the law a "Soviet plot"? Is the 14th Amendment a "communist plot?" Lets join the real world shall we.. And Civil Rights policy has been around since the 1800s, long before the SOviet Union appeared to allegedly "set" US domestic policy.
The bottom line is US policy should be set according to the interests of Americans, not in response to foreign propaganda. The 1964 Act outlawed freedom of association, with costly and negative consequences for Americans.
Now the Red Chinese want American citizens disarmed. Should we listen to them too, Yan Shen?
"A report issued by the State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China has included U.S. gun ownership among a list of human rights violations...
Left unsaid is the inconvenient truth that rendering captive populations unable to resist makes such monstrous crimes against humanity not only possible, but inevitable.
Also left unquestioned: What is the motivation and agenda of any American who advocates Chicom-style citizen disarmament, knowing full-well its blood-drenched historic record?"
To demand inclusion while reserving the right to exclude is a pretty common, not to say universal, human propensity. You don't make an appeal to universalist principles to a people who aren't susceptible to such appeals.
The Scots Irish strategy in a nutshell.
totally unrelated but I think Obama's election has ushered in a wave of miscegnation among young people. it's funny. i'd like to hear steve write on how that will work out. how large the mixed (cory booker/obama) segment of the US be in the future.
Obama is an awesome marketing tool for interracial dating:
"Get pregnant by a black man and your child can get into Harvard Law and even become president of the most powerful country on the planet."
I think Obama's election has ushered in a wave of miscegnation among young people.
There may be more VISIBILITY with interracial couples, but overall there is really no "wave of miscegnation" ushered in by Obama. B/W marriages for example remain minor- less than one half of one percent of all marriages- hardly a wave, more like a trivial ripple..
The bottom line is US policy should be set according to the interests of Americans, not in response to foreign propaganda.
^^And civil rights policy was set according to the interests of all Americans, not foreigners. Said policy has been important in the history of the US and was around in America since the 1800s, long before evil communists in the Soviet Union appeared to allegedly "set" such policies.
The 1964 Act outlawed freedom of association, with costly and negative consequences for Americans.
^^Dubious. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated non discrimination in public accomodations and elsewhere. It did not forbid white racists or non-racists from freely associating with one another. They could and can associate only with other whites to their hearts content- they just can't discriminate on the basis of race when providing accommodations to the public. All laws or rules restrict humans in some way- Life 101.
The CRA did not forbid white racists from creating private clubs and other institutions to associate with fellow racists- nor does it forbid white non-racists from implementing things such as zoning controls that keeps out the type of housing that certain "other groups" might use (a white liberal favorite). And in fact, numerous whites have done just that.
SO how exactly is freedom of association "outlawed" and is there a constitutional right somewhere that says you get to pick choose who goes into Walmart with you? I mean if people don't want "evil Jews" to be in the same store with them fine, but since when are they entitled to this preference for pure Aryan stocks as a "constitutional right"?
As for alleged "costly and negative consequences" - ok but specify by whose definition- white racists? or some other nicer folk? All laws have consequences and costs- the CRA of 1964 is no different - and actions subsequent to laws by bureaucrats and judges always shape outcomes. New Deal legislation by the white Roosevelt Admin for example had deleterious effects on blacks at the implementation end in some cases, while benefitting whites handsomely. FOr example "white only" quotas in some New Deal programs were embraced by southern whites with the specific understanding that they would benefit and not blacks. In program after program, blacks were systematically cut out of the loop and sidelined, while whites pocketed the benefits and filled white racial quotas. See Ira Katznelson's book: WHen Affirmative Action Was White, for some eye-opening detail on white quotas.
But it could be well said for the CRA that some provisions such as removing discrimination in public accommodations had a quite POSITIVE effect - better US foreign diplomacy efforts, increased income from more free market transactions, removal of huge levels of waste caused by the need to produce duplicate segregated facilities for "colored" citizens, reduction of time wasted by business employees policing who is "colored" or not and/or confronting said "colored people" who failed to respect Jim Crow laws, and elimination of layers of racial bureaucracy and practices to enforce said laws. Another positive benefit was that large parts of white America could actually begin imlementing the equal treatment under the law thing it always talked about.
You need to sharpen up your analysis. Can you elucidate on these alleged costly and negative consequences for Americans due to the putative outlawing of free association by the CRA of 1964?
^^Dubious. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated non discrimination in public accomodations and elsewhere. It did not forbid white racists or non-racists from freely associating with one another. They could and can associate only with other whites to their hearts content- they just can't discriminate on the basis of race when providing accommodations to the public. All laws or rules restrict humans in some way- Life 101.
What's next, Cap'n Verbose? You gonna piss down my back and tell me it's rainin'?
"Civil Rights" (Rights Abrogation) and "anti-discrimination" (Anti-Freedom) laws, 1965 or no, amount to an assault on freedom. A giant step backward in terms of liberty (in the name of Liberty, of course). They are not minor tweaks, and they certainly don't just affect public accommodations (not that they'd be minor if that's all they did, mind). How one forms neighborhoods, communities, businesses and institutions is central to life.
And yes, Free Association is destroyed when people are prevented by law from choosing not to associate. Common sense, 101.
And all Americans are victims here, not just Whites.
But it could be well said for the CRA that some provisions such as removing discrimination in public accommodations had a quite POSITIVE effect - better US foreign diplomacy efforts, increased income from more free market transactions, removal of huge levels of waste caused by the need to produce duplicate segregated facilities for "colored" citizens, reduction of time wasted by business employees policing who is "colored" or not and/or confronting said "colored people" who failed to respect Jim Crow laws, and elimination of layers of racial bureaucracy and practices to enforce said laws. Another positive benefit was that large parts of white America could actually begin imlementing the equal treatment under the law thing it always talked about.
Now you're just off in la-la land. Every bureaucrat enforcing segregation has been replaced by three enforcing integration, the segregation red tape by three times as much integration red tape. Same goes for levels of waste, time wasted, etc.
Equal treatment under the law doesn't enter into it.
"All laws or rules restrict humans in some way"
Welp, time to end all debate on politics and governance. This guy here sez all laws or rules restrict humans (humans, mind you) "in some way". In light of that it seems foolish to call into question any law that restricts people--they all do! Thanks for the helpful tip, my friend.
"A conservative free-marketer"
A contradiction in terms, I'm afraid.
"Grover Prosling said...
^^Dubious. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated non discrimination in public accomodations and elsewhere. It did not forbid white racists or non-racists from freely associating with one another. They could and can associate only with other whites to their hearts content- they just can't discriminate on the basis of race when providing accommodations to the public. All laws or rules restrict humans in some way- Life 101."
The only thing dubious is your reasoning (and your flippant Snopes-like arrogance). How is the sale of a private house the provision of a public accomodation?
"Civil Rights" (Rights Abrogation) and "anti-discrimination" (Anti-Freedom) laws, 1965 or no, amount to an assault on freedom.
The fact that a black guy is now free to vote or obtain a zoning permit regardless of race is now an "assault on freedom"? This is Orwellian reasoning indeed, better than any leftie commissar could conjure up.
A giant step backward in terms of liberty (in the name of Liberty, of course). They are not minor tweaks, and they certainly don't just affect public accommodations (not that they'd be minor if that's all they did, mind).
How is the black guy voting or eating his hamburger in peace two tables down "a giant step backward in terms of liberty?" This seems quite melodramatic. Don;t you really mean that you think the black guy should NOT be free do do these things? Just come right out and admit it. You want "liberty" only for CERTAIN white people, as it suits you, not liberty for other Americans to carry out their lives as they see fit, equally treated under the law. This is your bottom line.
How one forms neighborhoods, communities, businesses and institutions is central to life.
Sure, and laws are one key central structure that forms the above. None of your "neighborhoods, communities, businesses and institutions" would exist in modern life were it not for laws that restrict the liberty of the people they govern. Show me a society with laws that do not restrict freedom of association and "liberty." We'll wait...
And all Americans are victims here, not just Whites.
Your logic is rather thin. How does a black guy exercising his right to vote, unharassed by violent intimidation or bogus requirements imposed because he is black, a "victim" of civil rights laws that guarantee his liberty to do so? How is a Jewish guy a "victim" of laws that says you can't refuse to give him a business license because he is Jewish?
And yes, Free Association is destroyed when people are prevented by law from choosing not to associate. Common sense, 101.
Laws restrict free association all the time. Adults for example may not "freely associate" with children in school district showers. Likewise laws forbid civilians armed with automatic rifles from "freely associating" at the entrance ways to military bases (or trespass on private property) without authorization. But more specifically, we are talking the CRA of 1964 which you or someone alleged "outlawed" freedom of association. How? Specify concrete examples, and specify whether said examples represent outlawing of free association or whether they represent something else.
Every bureaucrat enforcing segregation has been replaced by three enforcing integration, the segregation red tape by three times as much integration red tape. Same goes for levels of waste, time wasted, etc. Equal treatment under the law doesn't enter into it.
Besides your own opinion, what credible evidence do you have to offer that your "three plus bureaucrat" numbers indeed replaced the enforcers of segregation at state, local and national levels, in both the north and south, over the span of over 100 years? What were these numbers to begin with, and how many replaced them? Just taking one example, how many "integration police" today replaced 100 years worth of white conductors, stewards, supervisors, ticket clerks, and security guards that enforced segregation in government regulated railway transport? 100? 1000? Do tell...
And how does "equal treatment" NOT enter into such laws as requiring voting registrars to register people regardless of race, or requiring clerks granting building permits to do so regardless of race?
^^Dubious. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated non discrimination in public accomodations and elsewhere. It did not forbid white racists or non-racists from freely associating with one another. They could and can associate only with other whites to their hearts content- they just can't discriminate on the basis of race when providing accommodations to the public. All laws or rules restrict humans in some way- Life 101."
The only thing dubious is your reasoning (and your flippant Snopes-like arrogance). How is the sale of a private house the provision of a public accomodation?
You appear to have both reading comprehension and logic problems. Who said or says the sale of a private house is "public accommodation"? DO you see anything mentioning private housing sales in the snippet you chose above? Focus and come up with a better analysis. Raise your game.
"'Civil Rights' (Rights Abrogation) and 'anti-discrimination' (Anti-Freedom) laws, 1965 or no, amount to an assault on freedom."
The fact that a black guy is now free to vote or obtain a zoning permit regardless of race is now an "assault on freedom"? This is Orwellian reasoning indeed, better than any leftie commissar could conjure up.
I like how you're wielding "leftie commissar" as a weapon, as if you're not a lefty. Cute.
But your tactic of cherry-picking one aspect of "civil rights" (one I had not objected to), pretending it's the only aspect of "civil rights," and then pretending it was what I was objecting to, is pretty weak. Anemic, really.
"A giant step backward in terms of liberty (in the name of Liberty, of course). They are not minor tweaks, and they certainly don't just affect public accommodations (not that they'd be minor if that's all they did, mind)."
How is the black guy voting or eating his hamburger in peace two tables down "a giant step backward in terms of liberty?"
Telling people they don't get to choose who they do business with is a giant step backward for Liberty. It's like "freedom of inoffensive speech," or "freedom to choose a Tolerant religion," or "the right to bear non-assault arms"; a neutered right.
First they came for the anti-Semites, and I didn't speak out.
Then they came for the racists, and I didn't speak out.
Then they came for the conservatives, and I didn't speak out.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.
This seems quite melodramatic.
But your paeans about poor darkies eating their hamburgers in peace are cold logic personified.
Don;t you really mean that you think the black guy should NOT be free do do these things?
Yes; I do not think the black guy should be able to demand (backed by the federal government) service from the poor guy making his hamburgers in peace while working on his physics degree and caring for his sick grandma.
Just come right out and admit it. You want "liberty" only for CERTAIN white people, as it suits you, not liberty for other Americans to carry out their lives as they see fit, equally treated under the law. This is your bottom line.
Wrong; I advocate the same rights for every citizen.
"How one forms neighborhoods, communities, businesses and institutions is central to life."
Sure
So, I wasn't being melodramatic.
and laws are one key central structure that forms the above. None of your "neighborhoods, communities, businesses and institutions" would exist in modern life were it not for laws that restrict the liberty of the people they govern. Show me a society with laws that do not restrict freedom of association and "liberty." We'll wait...
And the test for a justifiable restriction is whether it preserves liberty, or harms it. The "freedom" to murder people, break into their homes, etc., harms liberty. Laws protecting your right to decide for yourself how you dispose of your property, with whom you make contracts, or with whom you associate - these things all preserve liberty.
"And all Americans are victims here, not just Whites."
Your logic is rather thin. How does a black guy exercising his right to vote, unharassed by violent intimidation or bogus requirements imposed because he is black, a "victim" of civil rights laws that guarantee his liberty to do so? How is a Jewish guy a "victim" of laws that says you can't refuse to give him a business license because he is Jewish?
My logic is self-evident. The black guy who wants to have a black business, hire only blacks, serve only blacks, etc., is harmed by these laws because he's forced to use his property in a way that makes TPTB happy, and himself unhappy. His right to property and pursuit of happiness (as long as they doesn't infringe upon or violate others' rights) are being trampled in the name of "the right" to pursue happiness by infringing others' rights. The black guy who doesn't want to do any of these things is harmed by these laws in the same way a man who can't afford a gun is harmed by the deterioration of the right to bear arms, the way a man who's taken a vow of silence is harmed by the erosion of the right to free speech, etc.
"And yes, Free Association is destroyed when people are prevented by law from choosing not to associate. Common sense, 101."
Laws restrict free association all the time. Adults for example may not "freely associate" with children in school district showers. Likewise laws forbid civilians armed with automatic rifles from "freely associating" at the entrance ways to military bases (or trespass on private property) without authorization.
Laws that restrict freedom of association in a good way, a justifiable way, are categorically different from laws that restrict one man's freedom in order to advantage another man. School showers are government property, so yes, I think the government has the right to set the rules on its turf. Similarly, a private citizen should get to decide who showers on his property, and how. Laws forbidding intimidation with rightfully-owned firearms are protecting other citizens from coercion and intimidation on the part of the arms-bearers. These "civil rights" laws forbidding Americans from choosing their associates, their employees, or how to dispose of their property, are doing the opposite; they are coercing people, not preventing coercion.
By the way, shouldn't those government showers be co-ed? Not separate but equal? I mean, Jim Crow laws are a bit 19th century, aren't they?
But more specifically, we are talking the CRA of 1964 which you or someone alleged "outlawed" freedom of association. How? Specify concrete examples, and specify whether said examples represent outlawing of free association or whether they represent something else.
Nope, I'm discussing civil rights laws as a body. I made this perfectly clear in my first sentence. If you didn't want to argue with me, you shouldn't have.
And no, I'm not going to do your research for you. This is not "Educate Grover" day, and I'm not particularly interested in studying the minutiae of the law.
"Every bureaucrat enforcing segregation has been replaced by three enforcing integration, the segregation red tape by three times as much integration red tape. Same goes for levels of waste, time wasted, etc. Equal treatment under the law doesn't enter into it."
Besides your own opinion, what credible evidence do you have to offer that your "three plus bureaucrat" numbers indeed replaced the enforcers of segregation at state, local and national levels, in both the north and south, over the span of over 100 years? What were these numbers to begin with, and how many replaced them? Just taking one example, how many "integration police" today replaced 100 years worth of white conductors, stewards, supervisors, ticket clerks, and security guards that enforced segregation in government regulated railway transport? 100? 1000? Do tell...
Integration, civil rights laws, and similar legislation, are federal laws enforced by massive federal bureaucracies. Segregation was limited to (relatively poor) state governments (largely) in the American SE. The size and scope (and budget) of the federal government has grown markedly since the Jim Crow days. It's not hard to take an educated guess as to who's spent more blood and treasure.
But to answer your question, so far I've got as much credible evidence as you do for the assertion you made, and I responded to.
And how does "equal treatment" NOT enter into such laws as requiring voting registrars to register people regardless of race, or requiring clerks granting building permits to do so regardless of race?
I've restricted myself to positions on the private sector for a reason.
You appear to have both reading comprehension and logic problems. Who said or says the sale of a private house is "public accommodation"? DO you see anything mentioning private housing sales in the snippet you chose above? Focus and come up with a better analysis. Raise your game.
He did the same thing you did, and you're at least as guilty of doing what you're accusing him of.
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