Equality, Collectivism, Barbarism
I reader whose opinions I do not dismiss has pressed upon me the argument that unchecked immigration of unassimilated immigrants is a danger to the Union, to our way of life, and the West. I entirely agree.
He identifies the horrid but empty concept that goes by the name diversity as the main justification used by those mounting the threat, and, again, I utterly agree.
But then he says that equality, not equality of outcomes, mind you, but the spiritual equality of men before God and the legal equality of men before the Law, is the true source of the danger, the thing that makes diversity possible, perhaps inevitable, and that a society based on equality rather than on race-loyalty is a philosophical experiment as Utopian and doomed as the daydreams of the Communists. He points to the decline and fall of Rome to show the dangers of race mixing and unchecked immigration.
He also, or others of his school of thought, point to the Jews as the source of the insidious scheme to dechristianize the West and to murder all whites by genocide.
With all due respect, I can think of no political stance more worthy of condemnation than this. It is as bad as communism because it is communism, merely with the white race taking the place of the economic class on which all loyalties are meant to be based, and proposing a defensive rather than an aggressive revolution and overthrow of our system of government, culture, virtues, and way of life.
As a Catholic, I cannot place national and local loyalties above their proper rank in the hierarchy. A Catholic must be catholic. Also, since history shows anti-Semites always, sooner or later, turn into Anti-Catholics (see Saint Maximilian Kolbe for details) a lively sense of self preservation, even if the ideas were not illogical in and of themselves, would prompt me to abjure this camp and condemn it.
As for the illogic, no more need be said than that those who favor inequality in civic issues either have the right of free speech, as all free men do, or they do not.
If they employ the right, presumably they are equal to the rest of us who have it. If they are not equal, they either are casting themselves in the lower position in civic matters, in which case they should stand silent, since they have no right to speak; or they seek to silence others, in which case they should look to their guns and sharpen their swords, since that is the gentlest answer merited by any man who holds himself justified in abolishing the liberty and equality of his peers.
That all men are created equal is self-evident. It is tantamount to saying no one is born worthy of a crown or both worthy of a fetters.
Such talk dismissing American liberty has become loud of late, as the memory of World War Two fades, and as the Left uses the school system to remove all honor and glory from the concepts in which the nation is founded.
Let me address my comment to my specific reader, who I fear to be floundering is a seductive but false ideology, whose falsehood is easy to expose:
Sir, the esteemed and highly-intelligent Ayn Rand, in order to fight the Commies, thought that the best way to undermine their philosophy (which used the figleaf of altruism to cover over their bloody and unearthly crimes) was to embrace a philosophy that abolished altriusm. This, unfortunately, gets rid of the basis of all human relationships outside of purely commercial mutual exchanges for mutual convenience. In order to get rid of altruism, she also had to get rid of Christ, who is the source, in the West, for enshrining the idea that lower, lesser, poorer and weaker people have some innate value.
So her plan to get rid of Communism was to get rid of the source of everything good in the West, and to start all over again, like a French Revolutionary, at Year Zero in a god-free and altruism-free world.
At the moment, America is and has been under attack by Leftist enemies who continue the same policies and strategies initiated by the communists to undermine and destroy America. The fact that there is no longer a USSR to benefit from the destruction never enters their minds.
One weapon, and a powerful one, which they use is this notion of Diversity, that is, that in some vague way we are somehow better people if barbarians and enemies are moved en mass into our nation, and here told to keep their old customs and old ways, and taught to hate America as the source of all evil in the world.
In order to fight this, you and others like you, have decided, like Ayn Rand abolishing altruism, to abolish equality.
Like her, you had to redefine the term, or ignore definitions, and launch a lot of person attacks, and look down on a lot of people smarter than either of us. The intoxication of pride, warmed by the fires of anger, make a seductive brew.
Unfortunately, in order to abolish eqaulity, one must abolish rule of law, basic notions of fairplay, and the Christian faith.
The main thing that stands in the way of abolishing equality is the United States, the first nation in the history of the world to have a go at trying the experiment of equality, and the first to receive the absurd riches, power, moral stature, blessings and benefits which flow from that way of life.
So you have to rewrite history. And, apparently, not just American history, but Roman history as well, to make it seem to support your abortive theory. This is a Leftist tactic.
Like Ayn Rand, you are simply throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The kind of America you propose is not only unamerican, it is anti-American, and to claim that yours is the same as the vision of our founding fathers is not merely a lie, but a stupid lie. Even with the terrible education someone gets from public school these days, a cursory inspection of all the writings of the Fathers shows that they embraces the Enlightenment concepts of the rule of law, the rights of man, and equality.
Your arguments are not only weak, they are the same rhetorical points make in the same rhetorical way, including unconvincing personal attacks, is merely collectivism again. You are a Leftist of a new sort: a Leftist who thinks of himself as Right.
I want to preserve Western Civilization from its enemies. Any who wants to abolish equality, whether he knows it or not, becomes of the enemies of the West. Overturning the one quality of equality in the eyes of the law, which the Greek called, isonomia, became part of the classical and later the Christian world.
If you reject a notion as old as Greek democracy, and the foundation of all Western political thought, you are no longer in the orbit of Western thought. This, alas, puts you beyond the ecumene, beyond the pale, not part of the civilized world. You may speak Greek, but, like one too many a man overfed on the luxuries of civilization, hence despising civilization, or forgetting its roots, you have unwittingly become a barbarian.
I want to preserve the West. If that is your wish also, do not make the task more difficult.
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.
