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Identify as Free
“He was a free man—not merely a background or a race.” — Larry Arnn describing the late Walter Williams
I received an e-mail this week from Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, announcing that Hillsdale had recently endowed a chair in their economics department and named it after the late Walter Williams.
I was struck by something Arnn said in the e-mail, highlighted in the quote above. In his description of Williams, Arnn succinctly made explicit the distinction between freedom and circumstance.
We’re living through a time during which the most influential voices in the culture are continually hectoring us into believing that we are each merely the “product” of our circumstance. We are told that our identity as human beings is indistinguishable from our background and desires. The two facets of our circumstance most often emphasized are the color of our skin and our sexual appetites. We are bombarded by a steady stream of propaganda that our sexual and pigmentational circumstance determines who we are.
But circumstance is not identity. Pigmentation is superficial. Appetites can be refused. It is human agency that decides.
Freedom is real.
People who believe that their circumstance determines their identity are less likely to make use of their freedom. This, not coincidentally, serves the interests of all those who would control their neighbors. Thus the concerted effort to convince us all that our identity is nothing more than an amalgamation of our skin color and sexual appetites. Such an effort is indistinguishable from a determination to blind us to the real freedoms we actually possess.
Identifying merely as a race or an appetite is nothing so much as a pathway to slavery. Anyone encouraging such beliefs about human identity is either lying or trafficking in lies.
Don’t believe them.
Published in General
I wonder how a progressive would answer the question: Is this right or not?
Absolutely spot on, and very well put. It’s all about manipulation.
The truth will make you free. Live not by lies.
I am absolutely behind! I did not realize Walter Williams had died! I’m glad he’s been honored this way.
So if you identify as a “free man,” what is your culture? Who are your people?
Are you a “culture” of one, a society of one, a nation of one? Or are you solitary, alone, a rock, an island?
You have the ability to select your culture, and choose what parts of it suit you. Not to be identified by it.
Flannery O’Connor observed in a letter to a friend that the best time for a writer was when he has finished his work but before it is published and “begins to be misunderstood”.
If you are asking these questions I’m afraid you have misunderstood me utterly. I was addressing none of these questions nor did the point I was trying to make implicate these questions. There is a widespread acceptance, not only on the left but perhaps more self-consciously on the left, of the idea that one’s pigment or sexual proclivities exerts a controlling or defining power over one’s identity. That list (pigment and appetites) is not exhaustive, but sufficient to make the point I was trying to make, which is that human agency, hence moral agency, is real. I’m arguing that human behavior is chosen and not determined. I’m challenging the idea the people act the way they act because of their skin color, or that they must inevitably act on their sexual attractions.
This has precisely zero to do with culture, or nation, or whether someone is part of a community. I’m making a point about human volition in contrast to the identitarians who wander the land sowing disillusionment and despair. Our pigments and our appetites control precisely nothing about what we will do – human freedom is real and our actions are chosen.
I don’t know how else to say it. You may think this is an esoteric point. Or maybe you think it’s just obvious. But I assure you it is not obvious to many, and what people believe about this is a matter of life and death. I have seen the wrecked lives and stood over the graves.
That doesn’t work, in my opinion.
Frankly, it’s looking more and more like the attitude of a spoiled teenager, to me, who wants to take everything from the family that he wants, and ignore his responsibilities.
I used to find that view attractive, and was a libertarian in my youth. I was an obnoxious twit, but at least I grew out of it.
In the context of the original post, which is about economist Walter E. Williams and his push-back against anti-freedom socialist and racial identity grievance ideology, your comments are still obnoxious.
I cannot stop giggling! Thank you for that!
As a moderator it would be unseemly for me to tell you my reaction to the above comment.
Williams was a solid thinker and a brave man. It´s good to read that Hillsdale is honoring his memory in this manner. Thanks for the post.
This is such an important distinction between Left and Right and so very well articulated. Thank you!
And God bless Hillsdale! You know, they may very well appoint a white person to the Walter Williams Chair in Economics and wouldn’t that just make the lefties’ heads spin! And make the point!
Lefties do not believe in human agency. It’s the victim/oppressor dynamic 100% of the time, which excuses the “victim” of every behavioral choice he makes. It’s the end of virtue and responsibility, and we’re seeing how that’s works out.
Is it possible for attitude and values to the more the foundation of a true culture than language and style? Can one be a member of a “culture of freedom” that is stronger than the other influences around him? Can the attitude and values that direct the way he lives, thinks and acts mark him as one who “identifies” as a free man more than anything else despite his education, color, physical wellness, economic status or even the chains on his legs?
The left wants to replace an enlightened culture with one that enslaves.
Being connected to a culture…and being an independent thinker…are not incompatible, although there is a tension between them.
Most of the German anti-Nazi resisters of whom I am aware considered themselves to be patriotic Germans.
It doesn’t look as if you outgrew the part that provides no allowance for others to be wrong.