If you have been reading my blogs you know I am no fan of Joe Biden, clearly the most catastrophic president in his nation’s history. A couple of days ago he used the word Negro two or three times in referring to the great Black baseball player Satchel Paige. While there was not the slightest hint of condescension or malevolence in his use of the term, he was nevertheless excoriated by many on the Left for the insensitivity of his language. When he was president, it turns out, Barack Obama had had the word banned from government usage as but a variation of the so-called N word.
But while the N word is justifiably loathed as a term of derision born of those days when Blacks were barely considered human in some circles, the word Negro, up until the recent past, was used both by Blacks and those sympathetic to their cause as a neutral, descriptive term. Yes, some might spew it with contempt, but ought not the intention of its users and the context of its use be the ultimate criteria upon which we base our judgements? In the novel “Huck Finn,” Huck repeatedly applies the N word to his friend Jim but he does so with affection and the work is in fact wonderfully progressive for its time. Was Clemens a racist monster for having used the word or is the very idea absurd? Are the “hurt feelings” of those who seem to be energizing the political Left appropriate indicators of genuine social issues, or are they very often the product of a baseless, immature sense of victimhood that verges on the pathological?
A number of pundits jumped to Biden’s defense. Ironically, while I agree with them, I also agree with those “conservatives” who pointed out the irony of the fact that had Trump been guilty of the very same “indiscretion,” he would have been universally excoriated by the Left. Such is the extent of the abandonment of Reason here in the West, a state of dysfunction, as I have pointed out in several blogs, which is actually celebrated by “progressive” simpletons such as John Ralston Saul, an “intellectual” who puts Empathy above Reason as his informing Ideological value.
But can feelings rather than Reason ever serve as the basis of a functioning Democracy? Ought we to be sympathetic to the feelings which motivated Adolf Hitler or is the very idea absurd? In several blogs I have excoriated the concept of “anti-racism” expounded by Ibram X. Kendi as being both duplicitous and intellectually untenable. Were he to declare himself traumatized by such criticisms, would that in any way impugn their legitimacy? Would that make me guilty of hate speech? Were any number of Blacks to declare themselves offended by Biden’s use of the word Negro, would that in any way alter the complete innocuousness of his intentions? Is the ridiculously vague concept of “hate speech” endorsed by most on the mindless Left, not an open invitation to violence to anyone who doesn’t like your point of view? Is it not in fact a brazen endorsement of the hysteria that led to America’s 2020 summer of destruction at the hands of Antifa and B.L.M.?
Yes, there is such a thing as “hate speech,” but our definition of such must be based upon rational, objective criteria rather than the often irrational feelings of those who claim to be its victims. That this eminently logical principle no longer holds sway in the “compassionate” West is, sadly, made manifest on a daily basis. Here in Hamilton, Ont., a 17 year old high school student, Megan Breeze, was recently removed from her co-op placement at a local hospital because she had used a hand signal in a social media post which she thought was the equivalent of a simple thumbs up, while others declared it to be an assertion of White Supremacy. That her “offense” was utterly unintentional, that it had done no harm to anyone, did not seem to matter to either Hamilton Health Services or her School Board both of which denounced any semblance of “hate” within their domains. But tell me, who are the villains in this scenario, Megan, or those who chose to “cancel” her in a knee-jerk reaction to political correctness? Moreover does not the assumption that people of color who might chance upon her “inappropriate” post would be offended by it, imply that they have the intelligence and maturity of a six year old? Is this not also true of those who might take offense from Biden’s use of the word Negro? Is not the Left’s conflation of genuine issues of social injustice with utterly trivial indiscretions, an example of the Bigotry of Low Expectations at its very worst? Colored people, the assumption would seem to be, are too stupid, too irrational to distinguish between the very real social injustices of the past and those trivialities manufactured by the contemporary Left to further its position of political dominance.
Critical Race Theory sees White Western Man as the greatest villain in all of history. It is in support of this factually deprived, demonstrably simplistic hypothesis, that the Left never stops citing examples of Western arrogance and oppression, including such abominations as Biden’s use of the word “Negro” and a young White girl’s insensitive flashing of an ambiguous hand gesture. Yet this same “intellectual” community is relatively mute about the fact that Asia and Africa are rife with levels of political, racial and religious intolerance barely distinguishable from Hitler’s Germany. Pointing this out, of course, makes me a White Supremacist! Such is the extent to which the Truth has been banished from discussion here in the “progressive” West!