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“Destined to Despotism and Unsuited for Self-Government”
Back in 2004, President George W. Bush proclaimed that, “It is cultural condescension to claim that some peoples or some cultures or some religions are destined to despotism and unsuited for self-government.” Perhaps diplomacy requires presidents to say such things, but the cold, hard, fact is that some people, cultures, and religions are unsuited for self-government. We’ve seen that in Afghanistan and the Middle East, and we’re seeing it now in American cities.
The college student who called the police and demanded that they arrest a PragerU video commentator for “terrorizing” the campus with his ideas; the CHAZ/CHOP denizens who got rid of the police and began stealing, raping, and murdering; the Mayor of Seattle who let her city’s citizens be victimized by the mob until the mob came for her; the BLM and Antifa rioters who assault innocent people and burn and loot businesses; and the left-wing legislators, city officials, and journalists who ignore or excuse the violence.
None of these people wish to live under a rule of law that applies equally to all people nor are they even capable of doing so. Instead, they demand the right to shut down dissent and do it violently if necessary. They demand that their violence be protected as free speech and that others’ free speech be criminalized as violence. They demand the right to destroy other people’s property and they shout down anyone who calls such destruction “violence.” They demand that people be granted preferential treatment under American law on the basis intersectionality rankings. They demand that the country’s history be rewritten and that their new “narratives” be taught in public schools. They demand the right to live at others’ expense. They demand that their “life choices” not only be tolerated but “celebrated” and subsidized.
Such people are not fit for self-government; they can be ruled only by force.
Published in General
Universal suffrage is a bad idea. But it might be the least bad option.
This is so well put. This is them in a nutshell (an appropriate receptacle).
If the woke are a different people from the Americans then we can truthfully say that they are a people not fit for self-government, who can only be ruled by force. But if the woke and the ideologically American are two different people, then history demands that they not try to exist as a single polity. It isn’t necessary that the woke are ruled by the Americans, nor that they rule the Americans. They can have their own country and be ruled by force, according to their preference, like the people of Chad or Somalia or North Korea or Communist China. America can once again conquer some territory and establish self-government, as we’ve done twice before. (Note that no State is still definitely American; if we were to incorporate a present member state of the USA, we would need to re-conquer it and re-establish self-government).
But we can’t continue as a single polity with two peoples whose basic beliefs are so mutually incompatible.
If on the other hand we are still one people, we are a people whose grownups have failed to bring up their children according to our traditions, and we need to spank them, send them to their rooms, and try to do a better job of parenting when they get out.
True. With freedom comes responsibility. The Left inculcates a lack of personal responsibility. “It’s Society’s fault!” or “It wasn’t his fault! He has low self-esteem!” or “He can’t help it if he’s an armed robber! His parents never got him a pony”
Okay, it’s “cultural condescension.” It’s also true.
Wait. My parents never got me a pony. Where’s the nearest riot?!
When any American citizen can say that looting is the same as reparations as one said about Chicago I believe your premise. Oh and it’s ok to loot because everyone is insured.
I actually saw an IPhone video of a woman (video made by her of herself) who was angry because she was foiled in her looting attempt because the store owners were standing outside and on the roof with guns. She was miffed, and she actually said it’s ok to loot because they have insurance. Also, the owners were Arab, and she went on a racist (she was black) tirade about Arabs.
Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs, 1993:
Poor, urban, African Americans seem to have “bloody borders” as well: Jews, South Koreans, Latinos, Arabs (apparently), and (of course) whites. Could the black underclass possibly have issues beyond white people? Could at least some of their problems have anything to do with their culture?
Reminds me of a contract I had in Newark, NJ. It was one of the greatest examples, along with East St. Louis, South Chicago, and Covington, KY, of a Great Society city. A segregated black slum that until the early sixties had been a vibrant, integrated city full of hope, good jobs, and opportunity for all. Now a war zone of drugs, crime, multi-generational dependency on the humiliating and incapacitating Federal dole, and human misery, with a few Washington-funded Potemkin towers of Big Corporation virtue-signaling “investment”, and thus, IT contractor jobs for people like me. But there was an area right in the middle of the city where you could go and get a great Portuguese meal and visit some shops, in a clean orderly environment.
How did this enclave come to be?
I found out that during the leftist race riots of the sixties, this district was called the “Iron Triangle”, because it was bounded by railroads connecting it with NYC and the world. It was the domain of the New York Mafia.
When the riots started, the Mafia posted armed guards on the rooftops of the boundaries of the Iron Triangle. The leftists–the Mafia’s competitors for control of society by deception, intimidation, and murder–dared not cross the border, so they could not smash and burn it into oblivion.
Portuguese food cooked by the Mafia, I love this country.
South Side of Chicago. The woman was, I believe, a follower of noted racist and fascist Louis Farrakhan.
Yes. People come to America from all over the world–come here with next to nothing–and succeed. They succeed because they place a high value on hard work, education, honesty, and lawful behavior. For this they are hated by people who think and behave, well, very differently.
Now to be fair when you write about all African Americans you should note that this is not about all but is primarily about those immersed in the ghetto culture–although there are African American professors who are racists.
A wise man once said, “if you’re going to have crime, it should at least be organized.”
As best I know, this was not the case in the first half of the 20th Century. So one must ask what caused the cultural decline.
This is why the violence will not stop until the people committing the violence are on the receiving end. What some of these cities need is a Richard Daley as mayor . . .
I think that it was LBJ’s Great Society programs, which created dependency on the state and imposed a “marriage tax” on the poor. Theodore Dalrymple’s book, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass, provides a vivid, if horrifying, look at the world created by Great Britain’s welfare state. One of Dalrymple’s key observations is the loss of agency experienced by those for whom the state provides their every material need. Their mindset tends to be oddly passive – they do not act, the world acts on them. Dalrymple, a medical doctor and psychiatrist, worked with inmates at a British prison for some fifteen years. He recounts the words of a man confined for murder, who talked about the knife going into the victim; as if it was the knife, and not he, who had committed the crime.
An excellent Dalrymple citation.
I think another factor was liberal tolerance of extremist leftist ideologies which slowly made inroads on our culture. Even in the sixties I noticed liberals treating Marxists and Nation of Islam racists as legitimate when they should have treated them as they did Nazis and the Klan.