Demonstrable disparities in our species’ levels of intelligence, moral integrity and achievement are anathema to those on the Left whose fundamental value of “inclusiveness” is rooted in the egalitarian delusion that we are all really the same. The acknowledgment that some civilizations categorically outperformed others in most every realm of human endeavor is now deemed a mere racist statement, particularly, of course, when articulated by a White, Western European. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the Chinese were in many ways well ahead of the Europeans during the so-called Dark Ages. Aside from inventing gunpowder and the compass, they had paper as early as the Second Century A.D.. Their use of “block printing” enabled them to produce books several hundred years before Gutenberg’s 15th C. invention of the printing press. While some may disparage such achievements as merely technological, clearly both civilizations were concerned with the spread of Knowledge and shared the fundamental assumption that human Intelligence is a key factor in Man’s existential journey.
I am in no way qualified to comment on the historical evolution of Chinese culture. But being fully educated on the history of the West, I can say with confidence that its cultural evolution is a perfect example of Socrates’ notion of “dialectic.” The “truths” of any given era, he averred, must be subjected to the constant, free exchange of new and perhaps conflicting ideas which can only take us further along the road to the ultimate truth. Beginning with the brilliant philosophical speculations of the Ancient Greeks, more or less succumbing to the tyranny of religious fundamentalism and various ruling elites through the Middle Ages, the West, with its profusion of intellectual and creative activity, slowly stumbled its way towards the Enlightenment and its reliance on Reason, which naturally led to the abandonment of the absurd idea of the Divine Right of Kings and the endorsement of the principles of Democracy, including that of the inalienable Rights of the Individual.
The Indigenous of Australia, the Americas and much of Africa made no such progress. This is a historical Fact and not the delusion of some gloating White Supremacist. The absurd stratagem of many “intellectuals” has been to focus on the technological primitivism of these peoples and suggest it was actually born of a profound respect for Nature. It wasn’t that they had failed to apply their intellects to the multitude of issues confronting them, they were actually environmental visionaries far wiser than their European contemporaries. The lunacy of this argument, obviously, is that it equates Ignorance and Inactivity with Achievement. Its ultimate result is the mindless trivialization of Culture as a significant aspect of the human dynamic.
What better illustrates this insanity than a recent declaration by the U.K.’s counter terror program, “Prevent,” which cited various plays, books and films as instigators of White Supremacism. Among those so designated were the complete works of William Shakespeare! Are there White racists who might use his works to justify their intolerance? Of course there are. But it is in no way racist to simply acknowledge that his poems and plays, amongst the most brilliant products of Western Man’s seeming commitment to the pursuit of Truth and Beauty, represent a level of cultural achievement radically superior to that of various other civilizations.
The contemporary Left, with its religious devotion to Inclusiveness, cannot tolerate such disparities. Its attempt to taint the incomparable works of Shakespeare by identifying them with White Supremacism, is just the latest example of the utter intellectual bankruptcy of its perspective.