The Righteous Anger of the Unrighteous Part I
Heard this story on the radio this morning coming into work. In Claremont California, three parents have successfully halted a yearly tradition among the kindergarten class of dressing up like Pilgrims and Indians.
"There is nothing to be served by dressing up as a racist stereotype," she said.
I am not making this up.
http://www.theodoresworld.net/archives/2008/11/claremontca_parents_clash_over.html
The three parents, it should come as no surprise, are all college professors. One of them is a professor of something called ‘Native American’ studies. I assume this means she studies people born in the United States, like me, as opposed to born overseas or in the territories, like my brother.
A nation whose self-esteem and self-opinion is not merely one of condemnation, but loathing, cannot and should not survive. I merely wish there was some way of severing the Culture of Death from the rest of us, so that they could go off into the wilderness somewhere and die, and leave the rest of us, and our traditions and laws, in peace.
Now, you may wonder, why do they stay here, if they despise this country so much? If we are akin to Nazi Germany, why do they not flee from us, from Hilter and his little Eichmanns, to preserve their lives (if they feel threatened) or at least, for the sake of love of righteousness, to isolate themselves from the deep wickedness of American and the American Way (if they do not)?
Why do they hate us so much? I mean the Left. Why does the Left hate us, and hate themselves, so much?
The short answer is that they are stupid people claiming to be smarter than the rest of us, and their offered proof of their smarts is that they say idiotic things in public that defy common sense (such as equating Pilgrims with Nazis); they are wicked people claiming to be more virtuous than the rest of us, and their offered proof of their moral superiority is their public display of contempt for moral norms (such as slandering our forefathers).
The long answer is that this type of moral preening is parasitical, what Ayn Rand called “White Blackmail.” Normal blackmail is threatening to expose some sin: White Blackmail is the opposite. It is the threat to expose some virtue to the contempt of the world, once virtue has been rendered socially unacceptable or illegal. The difference between the two is one of life and death: men are not dependent on vice to live, but they are dependent on virtues to live, even if only such bourgeoisie virtues as patriotism in wartime and thrift and honesty and hard labor at worktime. In this case, the white blackmailer depends on the moral code he is condemning to give himself a sense of moral superiority.
Obviously, if America actually had a Fuhrer, he would not allow Michelle Raheja to slander him: she would merely be beaten by browshirts or killed by the SS. The mere fact that she says the Americans are Nazi proves that we are not. Indeed (and here is where the element of White Blackmail enters in) the Mrs. Raheja and yammerheads like her are RELYING on the fact that we are not Nazis when they call us Nazis. If we actually were Nazis, there would be no point.
There would be no point because you do not get a cheap sense of moral superiority by actually making real claims about real vices that need to be corrected. You can only get this cheap feeling of moral superiority by finding a ‘soft target’, something widely regarded as moral, pleasant, and good (such as, for example, kindergarten kids playing dress up as Pilgrims and Indians to express thanksgiving to God for the bounty of the nation) and accusing it of violating its own moral code. The purpose is not to replace tradition with some better or more refined code: the purpose is self-satisfaction.
The moral code of the culture of death is both in rebellion against traditional morality, and logically dependent on it. The practitioners of the moral code of death have no real moral code to practice: they have no way of life, no holidays, nothing. What they have is our moral code, of which they take one minor aspect, such as courtesy or equality, and inflate that aspect to paramount importance, not in order to live up to it (God knows, most Leftists are racists, and fear minorities, and condescend to them and treat them like children) but merely in order to destroy the balance of the traditional moral code.
Moral preening, in other words, consists in a strange reversal of the Fifth Commandment. It is a command to dishonor your father and mother. That includes dishonoring your forefathers, your teachers, your church fathers, and all traditional sources of authority and law.
If your forefathers were Pilgrims fleeing religious persecution, who came to this country to a life of backbreaking labor, to win from the stubborn soil and from a merciless, uncharted wilderness filled with savages, the life liberty and prosperity you enjoy, the ungrateful repayment of their effort and sacrifice is to liken them to national socialist mass-murderers, the second most evil regime the world has ever known.
Moral preening includes robbing childhood of innocent joys. When a little child likes Indians (and what child does not like Indians?) and wants to dress up as one, you call the child a racist (this is a word, dear readers, that once meant something. At one time it was a very significant and emotionally-charged accusation. Now it merely means ‘crimethink.’)
Moral preening includes slanderous and poisonous anti-patriotism, hatred, or, at least, contempt for the laws, institutions, traditions, public and communal pieties; but most of all it includes a deep abiding and irrational hatred of the truth. What is needed for this kind of moral preening above all things is utter ignorance of history.
UPDATE TO THIS STORY…
source is The Claremont Insider
Dena Murphy, a Mountain View parent, just gave an update on "The John and Ken Show" (KFI radio, 64.0). The parents at both Mountain View and Condit were hopping mad at the school board wimps. (The School District said the feast could go on, but not with the costumes).
Happily, the 98% of parents – at both schools – who support the kids in costume are staging a protest tomorrow. Yep, they’re sending their kids to school in their costumes no matter how much the school board objects. Wait, it gets better…and then they’re KEEPING THEM HOME FROM SCHOOL on Wednesday, so those schools won’t get a dime of "attendance money" from the state for that day.
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.
