Lessons Learned

Friday, December 14, 2007

Not so long ago, "civil rights" activists and the left-wing news media put Jena, Louisiana in the national spotlight because, as Thomas Sowell put it:

The issue is the prosecution of a black high school student accused of stomping on an unconscious white student -- and the lack of criminal prosecution of white students who hung a noose on a tree, who were disciplined by the school.

Liberals' skills at moral equivalence have been so finely honed during the long years of the Cold War that they have turned this into a case of "unequal treatment," based on race -- as if putting a noose on a tree is equivalent to stomping somebody who is unconscious. [bold added]
Sowell's piece explores the morally outrageous behavior of the corrupt civil rights establishment as well as some some retaliatory thuggishness by some white supremacists, and correctly concludes, "The last thing the South needs is a return to lynch-mob justice, whatever the color of whoever is promoting it."

At the risk of gilding the lily, let me add that "mob justice" is a contradiction in terms.

As if that festival of moral equivalence and contempt for rule of law weren't enough, it would appear that its sub-themes of censorship and tolerance for violent behavior by black youths have been absorbed by the culture and applied. Not to condone race-baiting, but every noose -- and every off-hand remark about a noose -- it seems, gets a government inquiry and national headlines whether warranted or not.

In the meantime, it seems that children of about the same age as those in Jena, Louisiana, have picked up on the implicit message that beating white people up is not really such a big deal. Combine this message with the fashionable notion that whites have it coming to them for past injustices by (other) whites against (other) blacks and almost anyone can see where this was heading.

Twice it appears, black youths in Baltimore have attacked white bus riders recently.
There has apparently been another bus beating on an MTA bus in Baltimore.

WBAL-TV reports that two men aboard the #64 bus in Brooklyn claim they were attacked by a group of 7 black teens. The two men say they were attacked because they were white. They also claim the bus driver refused to call police for them.

The two men suffered cuts and bruises.

The MTA says it is investigating the claim.

This comes less than a week after a white woman was beaten on a bus. 9 black middle school students have been arrested in that case.
In the first instance, the victim was a woman. As quoted from news reports by Michelle Malkin:
As Sarah Kreager, 26, tried to sit down on a Baltimore City bus Tuesday, police say, a middle-schooler told her she couldn't. When she attempted to take another seat, a middle-schooler wouldn't let her. Finally, according to police, Kreager just sat down.

She was "immediately attacked" by nine students -- three females and six males -- from Robert Poole Middle School. They punched and kicked her at 2:59 p.m. at the intersection of 33rd Street and Chestnut Avenue, according to Maryland Transit Administration police.

Kreager was dragged off the bus and her boyfriend, Troy Ennis, attempted to get her back on, police said.

She sustained "serious injuries" and had to be transported to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, according to a police report.
Except for the races of the victim and her attackers, this story sounds like it comes straight from the annals of the Jim Crow era.

That there has been a massive outrage and a vocal defense of the six hooligans from Jena -- but a deafening silence over this -- speaks volumes about the depths to which the "civil rights" establishment has sunk.

Unfortunately, children from around the country appear to be hearing and applying the message from today's "civil rights" leadership, which I summarize as this: "It's okay to attack white people if you're black."

I somehow doubt that this is the glorious ideal of Martin Luther King's dreams.

As Ayn Rand once put it so eloquently, "The smallest minority is the individual." It is precisely this minority that race-baiting leftist and white supremacist alike seek to oppress. The fight for the only real minority rights -- individual rights -- will not be anywhere close to over until all instances of racially-motivated thuggery are greeted with the same degree of moral outrage by everyone.

-- CAV

12 comments:

Myrhaf said...

The Jena Six case inspired me to reread Ayn Rand's essay, "Global Balkanization." I wrote about it here:

http://myrhaf.blogspot.com/2007/10/politically-correct-racism.html

Gus Van Horn said...

Thanks for reminding me of that post.

It is quite to the point.

Anonymous said...

Very well-written post, Gus. It shows clearly how what was once a proper liberal movement becomes it own opposite when co-opted by the Left.

Anonymous said...

"As Ayn Rand once put it so eloquently, "The smallest minority is the individual." It is precisely this minority that race-baiting leftist and white supremacist alike seek to oppress."

Amen to this. I hate to continually stress this but here is an example of the white supremacism of some Conservatives:

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/009446.html

Notice this disgusting comment regarding the beating on the bus that you blogged about:

"Could this have happened in pre-1960s America? No, and especially not in the South, because white society was frankly on guard against this very sort of thing, and held the black population under a rule and a discipline."

He goes on to offer a left handed apology for Jim Crow but his essential metaphysics is evident; "black savagery" is a function of race and not the culture created by anti-individualist ideas.

I have seen four different (and popular) conservative sites with this implicit view over the past few months. Plus, I have seen similar white power attitudes like this from European sites that have received attention because of a dispute regarding Little Green Footballs and Charles Johnson - who has acted honorably in denouncing the European racists (he has been condemned by the likes of Auster as they call him that dreaded word "liberal").

I'm sensing the growth of old style southern racism (forgive my use of southern, I don't mean to slander all southerners). Between multiculturalist racists like Sharpton and Jackson and the growing cadre of white supremacists / racialists, this country is heading for a potentially ugly future regarding race relations. America is becoming Balkanized racially, religiously and economically. Not good.

John Kim

Gus Van Horn said...

Thanks to you both, Jim and John.

And the link shows how, once again, the left plays into the hands of the right.

Racists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, in promoting black racism, are making the white supremacists able to say, "See. I told you so." and convince the ignorant and unwary.

That is a shame, to put it very mildly.

Myrhaf said...

John Kim's observation about the rise of racism on the right is something I have not read anywhere else. It would be nice if John started a blog of his own because he has a lot to say.

Gus Van Horn said...

That's the truth! And he's not the only commenter here I wish blogged!

Anonymous said...

Myrhaf and Gus,

I intend to start a blog within the month. I will provide the link when I do. I'll take the plunge.

Myrhaf,

As for the racism of the Right, its something I have been tracking for about a year. It shocked me when I first discovered it. I remember Tracinski saying that racism was a "dog that has stopped barking." Tracinski is way wrong. Here is a link to a blog post that provides a number of links to these kinds of racists or as they tend to call themselves "white nationalists." Forget the commentary of the blog author, the important part is the links, specifically Vdare and American Renaissance. And of course Larry Auster is the poster child for White Nationalists. And speaking of Auster, here he is discussing the importance of racism or what he calls racialism (scroll down to his comments) to conservatism. Money quote:

"Liberals cannot take in the reality and impact on a society of entire collectivities of people of a different race and culture, because that would mean letting go of their sacred paradigm that only the individual matters, that race doesn't matter at all, that all people are basically alike and that all nonwhite people can assimilate into white society...This confirms my view that without the racial aspect of conservatism, all the other aspects of conservatism come to naught." The problem with liberalism is all that individualism (!!). Can you imagine the conceptual confusion to come up with that idea, yet it is common on the Right as I've learned.

I don't know how popular white nationalism is in the Conservative movement but I have a felling as the Left gets worse this form of racism will grow. As Gus said, the Left and Right play right into each other's hands. I'll cover this more in my blog.

Hope all that proves interesting.

John Kim

Gus Van Horn said...

John,

I'm looking forward to following your blog.

Gus

Burgess Laughlin said...

John Kim says: "I intend to start a blog within the month."

I look forward to reading your weblog. As one who has recently started my own weblog, I have a suggestion to keep in mind: Because it is your weblog, you can define all of its essential characteristics: your public purpose, your private purpose, the scope, the frequency, and your relationship to readers and especially to commenters.

John Kim also said: "[...] the Left and Right play [...] into each other's hands."

I hope that you will define the terms/ideas of "Left" and "Right." Many discussions and debates about them are fruitless because the debaters have either differing, but unstated, definitions or no definitions at all. That means the debaters are either not talking about the same subject or they don't know to what facts of reality they are referring.

Anonymous said...

And the link shows how, once again, the left plays into the hands of the right.

It would be more accurate to say, how the left hand and the right hand **of the same enemy** play off one another in the pursuit of the same goal.

Racism, being the crudest form of collectivism and therefore a highly pure expression of the primitivism which is the Kantian end-of-road, is the issue where the left-right synergy is clearest; the persistence and return of "right" wing racism is largely due to both a reaction against and a synergy with the racism of the Left.

Reaction against, in that "affirmative action" and like programs create new injustices which serve to feed racism.

Synergy with, in that the racism inherent to the Left now dominates the culture, in particular the double-edged "victim complex" which works just as well to fuel anti-Semitism and anti-black racism as it does for the Left's own pet racisms.

What is the common goal of the Left and Right fist of our common enemy? John Kim gives us the key clue:

regarding Little Green Footballs and Charles Johnson - who has acted honorably in denouncing the European racists (he has been condemned by the likes of Auster as they call him that dreaded word "liberal"). Emphasis mine.

That is our single enemy's end-of-road: to discredit the Enlightenment and the genuine liberalism which originated therein.

In this instance, Johnson should wear that label proudly. He is doing all of us an important service; not only is he maintaining the right line in the battle, his doing so helps to to reveal the unprincipled ones, the bloggers on the right who are ultimately not our friends. One of them is Pamela Geller, whose blog is regrettably named "Atlas Shrugs".

Gus Van Horn said...

Thank you, Jim, for posting that extremely lucid explanation of how the left and right "hands" as you called them are joining to destroy what's left of the Enlightenment.