In an article in the New York Times of July 29, 2017, Robert Reich states that one of the foundation stones of modern Western society is the “conviction that all citizens are morally equal.” While the Architects of Democracy would certainly have agreed that all individuals need to be treated as Equals before the Law, is it in any way true that people in general are morally indistinguishable? Was Adolf Hitler not significantly different from Mother Theresa? Is that guy down the hall who smokes pot seven nights a week not significantly different from his studious, hard working neighbor? Reich uses his brazenly irrational hypothesis to argue against the abomination of socio-economic inequality. That some people have excelled while others have not is the Original Sin of the “Progressive” Universe. While certainly we must extend a helping hand to those in need, the notion that they are all the victims of some deliberate injustice is the governing yet demonstrably specious moral principle of our time, one which those such as Reich’s associate Paul Krugman never tire of exploiting.
In his book “The Undiscovered Mind” [1999] John Horgan cites the findings of Murray and Hernstein’s 1994 work “The Bell Curve” which asserts that the intellects of various sectors of the species evolved radically differently through time, such differences inevitably resulting in disparities in the achievements of the peoples in question. Both Horgan and the much respected Noam Chomsky expressed regrets with the book’s thesis, asserting that it simply feeds the cancer of Racism. But a more recent work, Nicholas Wade’s “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History” [2014] validates its conclusion, as do a number of other works. The political Left is dementedly Egalitarian, determined to find the Principles and Values of all Civilizations to be equally valid, equally enhancing to the human condition, whatever the testimony of History, whatever the empirical evidence. While neither Horgan nor Chomsky is able to in any way impugn the findings of “The Bell Curve,” they each simply ignore its ramifications in the pursuit of their political agenda. Clearly their “feelings” precluded their devotion to the Truth. Such sentimentalism, oddly, has become the status quo of our “intellectuals” here in the contemporary West.
One of the chief weapons in the arsenal of the Left is the invocation of Marx’s materialistic determinism. People are simply not responsible for what they believe and how they behave because they are the victims of external forces beyond their control. Jared Diamond’s “Guns,Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies,” [1997] suggests that it is weather and geography which are primarily responsible for the achievements of various Civilizations. Yes, Plato, Socrates and Aristotle were given to rationally exploring the nature of Reality, the meaning of Life, the status of Women, the efficacy of various political Forms, etc., etc., while some of the Indigenous of other Continents are still mired in the Stone Age two thousand years later because, we are asked to believe, of the benevolent weather and geography of Ancient Greece. Determinism eliminates thinking, volitional human beings from the historical narrative, indeed makes all human effort by definition futile. It is both pragmatically useless and absurdly simplistic, yet one of the foundational principles of the contemporary Left.
Equally fundamental to “progressive” orthodoxy are the notions of Intellectual and Moral Relativism, the notion that all responses to the human dilemma are equally valid or indeed invalid. Of course if we are in fact merely the result of those external forces acting upon us [i.e., “nurture”], such Relativism would seem to be superfluous. Why bother to evaluate what we cannot control? Yet Relativism walks hand in hand with Determinism in the contemporary Left’s attempt to eliminate the Human Mind from the historical narrative. While both Isms are eminently debatable and of dubious human value, they are foisted upon us with a vengeance by the purveyors of political correctness, those ridiculous ideologues who ironically never tire of reviling the intolerance of the followers of Joseph McCarthy 70 years ago while behaving in the very same way today.
Repudiate Man’s capacity as an Intelligent/Moral Being and all is lost. Acknowledge that capacity and it is possible to admit the disparate historical achievements of all peoples without defining any Individual in the superficial terms of their Identity. The Racist is clearly guilty of such, but so also are those on the political Left, those who have come to reduce history to a matter of “oppressors” and their “victims,” invariably reducing the members of both classes to simplistic stereotypes. The historical facts of racism are so much more complex than the narrative relentlessly flogged in the contemporary media, the narrative which it seems to share with ANTIFA and B.L.M. It is a narrative which incites resentment and envy, a narrative which simply refuses to consider the actual moral/intellectual status of those involved. Of course there are racists, misogynists and homophobes lurking in what is typically defined as the political Right. But their biases have nothing in common with the rational “conservatism” defended here while those mobs presently vandalizing the streets of America are the inevitable result of the simplistic, morally null, Neo-Marxist paradigm of the Left. I cannot begin to express my disdain for the stupidity of those such as CNN’s Chris Cuomo, a typically sanctimonious White “progressive” who has swallowed the narrative of systemic White oppression hook, line and sinker. I am on the other hand inestimably inspired by the myriad of Black, Female, Muslim and Gay “conservatives” who have chosen to put the rational dictates of their Minds ahead of the specious blandishments of Identity. Are you familiar with Candace Owens, Thomas Sowell, Larry Elders, Clarence Thomas, Raheel Raza, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tarek Fatah, Janice Fiamengo, Christina Hoff Sommers, Camille Paglia, Dave Rubin, etc., etc., etc.? If you are not, you ought to be. They are amazing, each and every one!