Hooey and Phooey
A reader with the gnomish yet gnostic name of Gnossoss writes:
“Different population groups demonstrably have different heritable traits, and population groups have very different average tendencies. These differences (which can’t be bypassed for more than a generation or two by only importing compatible individuals due to reversion to the mean) will always tend to cause conflict between different groups of people, even if all sides have goodwill towards all other sides. It is not the ill intentions of an enemy that makes people of different nations …. come into conflict with each other.
“It’s not pleasant, but it is true. Vox has the right of this argument, however much we may wish he was mistaken.”
Except what you give here is not an argument. An argument gives the steps of logic leading from axiom to conclusion. There is no such step here: merely a leap of illogic.
From the axiom that different population groups have different heritable traits, it does not follow that the traits are genetic rather than cultural, are natural rather than produced deliberately by enemies of the union, or that the differences are of such a magnitude that they cause inevitable conflicts, or that such conflicts are or are not to be tolerated for the sake of the greater good that comes from the blessings of liberty.
In the example of two groups who grow wrathful at different rates, for example, putting more police in the more violent neighborhood might be a more cost effective solution than isolating the evil gene responsible for their evil and exiling those who possess it.
I have heard partisans of the Alt-Right make outrageous statements such as, for example, Spaniards and Jews and Irish and Germans are not now and never can become American: that no one not of Anglo-Saxon blood can ever become American. This, even for Spaniards and Jews who have served in the military, bled in the wars, and made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve the liberties we Americans enjoy.
Even granting that there are genetic and noncultural characteristics creating a different threshold of anger between, say, hot-blooded Spaniards and aloof Germans, it would not follow from this that no community of mixed races is possible or desirable, and that a community based on shared values, such as an agreement to respect the civic rights of other in return for being respected, cannot exist and should not be tried.
The proffered support for the Alt-Right claim that American is a Whites-only nation based on shared bloodlines, rather than a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, is a claim even shakier, namely, that the mention of securing the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity in the preamble to the Constitution, meant that, despite their many volumes of writings saying exactly the opposite, the Founding Fathers did not believe in the Rights of Man, but only in the Rights of Englishmen, and held the other races, Irish and Welsh and so on, to be too uncivilized to enjoy those rights.
How odd that Lincoln so entirely misunderstood the purpose of the Union and the theory of the Rights of Man as to provoke a war with the innocent Southerners, and tricked them into opening fire of Fort Sumter. How odd that Pennsylvania, which was mostly Germanic (Pennsylvania Dutch), was allowed to enter the Union, or Catholic Maryland, which clearly was loyal to a non-Anglosaxon culture.
More than one partisan of the Alt-Right mentions a naturalization law from the Eighteenth Century excluding non-White immigrants, and uses this a lonely proof that the Founding Fathers intended America to be, not a Christian nation supporting the Rights of Man, as they repeatedly said, but intended America to be a White nation supporting the Rights of Whites, something they never said.
Unfortunately, the wording of the law does not extend beyond the express purpose of the law. Since the only non-Europeans in North America at that time were Red Indians and Black slaves, with free Blacks as rare as Jews or Turks, the word “White” at that time referred to the same group as the words “Civilized Christians”. A newborn nation in the midst of the first steps of its experiment with a disestablishment form of government would prefer not to use the word ‘Christian’ in its laws.
But even supposing the argument to hold, in what sense is this early law to be accorded more respect than the laws which superseded it? Supposing that preserving America for Anglo-Saxons alone was the intent of the Act, why should we accord it more honor than we do the Dred Scott decision or the Alien and Sedition Acts? Why not regard this law as an aberration alien to the general character of the American spirit?
Even granting this argument (which I do not) that the Constitutional order before the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments was the only true America, and the post-Lincoln America is a false and corrupt Whore of Babylon, what grounds are there for preferring Antebellum America to Postbellum America?
More to the point, even if Antebellum America was a Whites-only nation into which Irish and Germans were introduced by unhappy accident, how does it follow logically that post-bellum America retains that element of its character, or should?
The historical fact is that America is not now and never has been a racial nation like the Irish or Japanese. It America is a union of what were once sovereign states of different cultures, denominations, and characters: fortunately, all the denominations were Christian, and the shared language and law was English. This allowed for sufficient organic unity (such as we conservatives says is the core of a country) for the union to be formed.
Racism, however disguised, is alien to that organic core which makes America what it is. It is alien, in fact, to European law and custom following the edicts of Justinian outlawing slavery, since it is alien to Christendom. It is, however, endemic to the human species: and the Alt-Right wishes to argue that this is a universal human characteristic that should be incorporated into our laws. They also argue that the idea of natural rights, rights innate to all men, individual rights, and all men being made in the image and likeness of God are recently coined, alien to Christianity, and alien to the legal traditions of Europe. Time does not permit a point by point refutation of this wingnuttery: I will say only that the crackpot arguing in favor of geocentrism has a more coherent argument with more evidence on his side.
The idea that Americanism is granted by birth rather than by dedication to the proposition for which America stands is now and always has been unamerican.
That is, in fact, the one thing that makes American different from other countries: the fact that you can become one of us by dedicating yourself to our ideals and asking to join. As GK Chesterton famously never said, America is the only nation with the soul of a Church.
Even if the Alt-Right wanted to make the humbler argument that Americans in the past were a nation formed by shared ideals rather than shared bloodline, but should halt the practice in the near future, and should hereafter all themselves to be a race like the Irish, the fact of it is that in order to be an American, you have to agree with the American ideas, the foremost of which is that America is an idea, not a bloodline.
All the Americans say so.
For a non-American to say that the Americans do not get to decide who is an American is absurd and silly. To say that Americans in past generations wanted America to be a race rather than a union is beyond absurd and silly: even the most cursory glance at the historical record makes the notion preposterous.
The Alt-Right would have better luck trying to persuade America that we are and have always been a monarchy. As if that were not the very system against which we rebelled in order to be born.
If the black Africans brought here as slaves were still worshippers of Mumbo-Jumbo and other savage gods, the Alt-Right might be able to make the argument that these cannot be assimilated. But in the 1950s, before the welfare state, the marriage rate and divorce rate among blacks in America were better than among whites. It was not until the federal government began bribing the blacks to have bastards, and giving them money in return for votes, that the rates among black poor turned toxic.
Now, since England has a similar urban poor problem caused by similar Leftist policies, the argument that the racial and genetic inferiority of the blacks in America causes them to be suckered by the Leftists into living like savage evaporates. Whites living under similar welfare state circumstances act similarly.
The Alt-Right makes much ado about the IQ differences between blacks and whites. Hooey and phooey.
It is hooey in that it is junk science: the differences between where the peak of the racial bellcurve falls are less than is found between twin brothers. Since IQ tests differ by ten and twenty points depending on whether the man taking the test was read bedtime stories as a child, it is hardly what one expects for a genetic difference.
It is phooey in that having a high IQ is not a necessity for being an honest, productive, chaste and decent member of a democratic republic. Indeed, very few high IQ people avoid the trap of intellectual pride which renders them unfit for society: nearly all college professors are high IQ types, and they are enemies of everything in Western Society. The devil was the brightest of the archangels.
Speaking as a genius myself (or, at least, so I am rated by my IQ test — one main reason why I regard them as hooey) I can tell you the genius is overrated. Honesty is a better trait to have for civic stability. Far, far too many people with high IQ regard themselves as being allowed to lie and deceive the unintelligent, whom they regard as inferiors, or as subhumans, and all the main antichristian and antiwestern attacks these days come from the fever swamps of the intellectuals.
And so on for all the Alt-Right junk science claims.
The Alt-Right uses all the same rhetorical tactics as the Alt-Left (otherwise known as SJWs) to promote the cause: the motte-and-bailey tactic of making extraordinary claims, and then, when challenged, pretending to have made a smaller, noncontroversial claim; outrageous personal attacks; endless boasts and flaunting of one’s self as a paragon and one’s opponents as devils and fools, with almost no word spared on the actual dispute itself. The virtue-signaling, the screech-mobs, the empty victory parades the self-pity of the crybaby combined with the cruel vindictiveness of the bully: the Alt-Right is as intellectually bankrupt as the Alt-Left, or otherwise they would not be using their tactics.
Such is not the behavior of someone confident that the facts on his side will speak for themselves. This is the stance of a partisan (or a con man) who has contempt for his audience, and thinks they are swayed by emotion, not logic.
As for Vox Day, whether or not his argument is pleasant or unpleasant has no bearing on the matter, and your wishes or mine have no bearing on the matter.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
