Category Archives: Africa

UPDATED: The Founders Reduced

Africa, Colonialism, Ethics, Founding Fathers, History, Human Accomplishment, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Nationhood, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Race, Racism

After a conference (some photos are posted below) in Baltimore, I decamped to Old Town Alexandria (still occupied federal territory) to do some sightseeing. That meant staying away from the venue from which Glenn Beck and his 9/twelvers choose to rouse the nation: DC. Incidentally, a gentle bouquet of sewerage blanketed DC when I landed at Reagan National Airport. It lingered for days.

I, of course, needed no olfactory reminders to steer clear of DC. We headed into Virginia. Fredericksburg, Charlottesville, and Orange: The landscape took my breath away. So beautiful, so steeped in history and patriotism. One could so clearly see why magnificent men once defended these places to the death.

Sadly, after touring George Washington’s Mount Vernon, James Madison’s woefully neglected Montpelier, and Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, Sean and I turned into betting men. The bet? In what room, or stage of the guided tour, would our guide begin to deconstruct the founders for slavery, making sure that all present understood how compromised were these brilliant and brave individuals because of that peculiar institution.

Whites had been taught well. Many of the questions fielded touched on slavery; most of those present were eager to display their exquisite sensitivity. Achingly sensitive: Although the slave quarters were closed for renovations, one young man had draped himself over a windowsill. There he stood motionless, deep in thought, his frame racked by (very showy) pain.

An African-American family sauntered toward the estate plan, where I lingered. The father pointed his son toward one thing and one thing only: “Here, son, were the slave quarters. Here is their unmarked tomb,” said dad. They left. Thus was the boy instructed to keep those suppurating sores oozing with resentment. Not a word did dad disgorge about George Washington. Thus was Washington whittled down.

At Monticello we were joined by my good friend the economist and historian Tom DiLorenzo. Tom has blogged about another libel leveled against “The Great Man,” on Lewrockwell.com: the notion that “Jefferson fathered six children with slave Sally Hemmings,” disseminated by the “school-marmish tour guide.”

On average, by the time you arrive at the second room in any given house, you are hit with the requirement that Honky expiate over slavery. The Founders, it is intimated, are beyond repair given the contradiction they embodied. This was the gist of the message.

One pimply female gatekeeper—she was ominously standing sentinel at Washington’s tomb—wearing trendy shades and a shortish skirt, explained to a concerned middle-aged white man: “Washington freed his slaves towards the end, but kept some on because “he was addicted to the life style.” Imagine using contemporary pop-psyche vernacular in this context!

HISTORY FROM BELOW. The history of the US is what the Legislative Black Caucus, the NAACP, and so-called civil-rights activists say it is; it’s history from below; a litany of complaints and contrivances from self-styled victims’ groups on behalf of minor historical figures.

Outside “the plantation office building where Stonewall Jackson died in Guinea Station, Virginia.”

These little piggies, Ossabaw Island Hogs, belong to the very breed once bred by George Washington at Mount Vernon. This most innovative farmer, who used state-of-the-art technologies and thinking with respect to agriculture and conservation, was, naturally, nothing without the slaves (whom he and his ilk schooled).

With Barely A Blog Star, Myron Pauli, who was good enough to attend the Mencken Club Conference.

Peter Brimelow and myself.

UPDATE: I understand that David, in the Comment hereunder, is being cynical when he writes, “I got it, the founders were flawed, sinful men like me and you,” but the following bears saying:

No, the Founders were nothing like us. Not even close. I’m not talking as an idealist, but as a realist. Judging from their deeds and their words, the American Founding Fathers were immeasurably better than just about anyone on earth today (and that goes for that gnarled, somewhat stupid sadist, Mother Teresa. And yes, Christopher Hitchens nailed the woman).

Their actions tell us that they forsook their fortunes for a cause we no longer have the intellectual or moral capabilities to grasp: liberty.

Their writings evince an intelligence and a level of abstraction far beyond that evinced by most contemporary intellectuals. In fact, Charles Murray’s monumental work, Human Accomplishment, in which he comes up with 4,002 subjects who “dragged their fellow men out of wattle-and-daub hovels and pushed them into space rockets,” tends to support my harking to the past, not the present, for intellectual inspiration.

Slavery was debated vigorously and finally abolished by the English—not the Arab or African traders (who persist in the practice).

I cover this topic in my yet-to-be-published book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For The West From Post-Apartheid South Africa. It is a complicated subject. The missionaries in Africa, for example, regarded slaves as children to be de-tribalized and missionized. They were taught skills and trades; mission stations acted as havens for refugees fleeing tribal depredations in South Africa.

As you tour the homes of the founders mentioned above, you’re wont to hear about this or the other wonderful cabinet maker or marvelously gifted horseman, or farmhand, etc. Who do you think taught the slaves these skills and trades? The monarchs of Buganda or Ethiopia?

As I say, the Founders were advanced for their time in EVERY respect. Not perfect, but a great deal more perfect than most of us.

The Afrikaner Shanty Towns Of South Africa

Africa, Democracy, Race, Racism, South-Africa

Finbarr O’reilly of Reuters reports: “At least 450,000 white South Africans, 10 percent of the total white population, live below the poverty line and 100,000 are struggling just to survive, according to civil organisations and largely white trade union Solidarity. South Africa’s population is about 50 million. …”

“South Africa’s unskilled whites find themselves on the wrong side of history, gaining little sympathy from those who perceive them as having profited unfairly during the brutal apartheid years.

Trade union Solidarity says there are around 430,000 whites who live in squatter camps. Around the capital Pretoria alone there are 80 squatter settlements. There are over 2,000 much larger black squatter camps across South Africa.

Formerly comfortable Afrikaners recently forced to live on the fringes of society see themselves as victims of ‘reverse-apartheid’ that they say puts them at an even greater disadvantage than the millions of poor black South Africans.

This feeling of victimisation and abandonment by the state has forged at the camp a collective sense of fatalism, isolation and firm reliance on their Calvinist religion. Each of the camp’s ramshackle huts and tents is adorned with religious paraphernalia and an Afrikaans language bible.” …

Finbarr O’reilly’s photojournalistic effort was featured in the New York Times too where one reader wrote correctly as follows:

Lower middle class people living close to the line have been discarded by the governments Black Economic Empowerment policy which forces companies to hire people with black skin.
After the 1994 elections a lot of white people lost their jobs and have clearly never recovered. The BEE policy has resulted in poor performance across the board especially from a governmental service delivery perspective, as highly skilled and qualified people with years of experience were replaced by people who were black but lacked the necessary qualifications or experience.

As usual, Adriana Stuijt, a pro-Afrikaner activist living in the Netherlands, posted the most poignant post at the NYT:

“The important point completely missed by the photographer and by the journalist is the fact that these aren’t ‘whites’- these are Afrikaners, a 3-million-strong minority. There are two kinds of ‘whites’ – the wealthier mercantile English-speakers who can flee the country with their British passports when times get rough; and the Afrikaner artisan-working class, which have no familial ties to their Northern-European roots and have a very difficult time emigrating to other countries. I am also appalled at the fact that the photographer took pictures of these very young and vulnerable children: Afrikaner children are being widely targeted by kidnapping gangs in South Africa. Basically these Afrikaners, being poor, have clearly lost all their privacy-rights as far as this photographer was concerned. Did the man at least make a donation to the only private charity which is allowed to help these Afrikaner people by law, namely Helping Hand of the Solidarity trade union movement? The ANC-regime denies these Afrikaners all food-aid, and many also are denied the right to medical care in public hospitals. Many of these Afrikaner women give birth inside their own shacks without any medical help. And according to a recent documentary by Dutch investigative journalist Saskia Vredeveld, they are so chronically underfed now that the newborns are beginning to die of malnutrition.

[SNIP]

My book is timely. Last week, I completed Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa. It’ll soon be off to the publisher.

ANC More Prudent Than DP & GOP

Africa, America, Debt, Democracy, Economy, Republicans, South-Africa

Want a measure of how bad America’s duopoly is; of the extent to which the criminal governments under which we Americans groan have run the country into the ground?

Unpack the significance of this tidbit: The African National Congress (ANC), the dominant party governing my homeland South Africa from 1994 in perpetuity, manages a public debt that is only 23 percent of GDP. According to The Economist, debt in SA “has started rising sharply again and is expected to reach 40 percent of GDP by 2013.”

By that time the apes that have collapsed our country’s economy will have incurred a debt in excess of our national income.

For the benefit of the pigmentally touchy, I use “ape” as a pejorative that applies to both Bush and his philosophical heir, BHO. To lovers of primates; parrots are the superior species.

If offended, substitute with fleas. I once did: “As Dr. Johnson said, ‘There is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea. ‘Neoconservative (Bush) or Progressive (Barack); louse or flea — a pest is still a pest.” —ILANA (October 30, 2009)

UPDATED: Viva Vuvuzela?

Africa, Race, Reason, South-Africa, Sport, The West

“The Vuvuzela And World Cup: A Symbol Of The End Of Civilization”: This is interesting comment by one of Larry Auster’s readers; I’ve been urged to comment about it by one of ours. Here’s my problem with sweeping, slightly hysterical deductions about the incessant horn blowing at the Soccer World Cup as a symbol of the destruction of western civilization: As a writer who reasons rather than emotes, I’m not mad about indulging in such deductions. For one, the leap from horn-blowing to civilizational demise omits some rather crucial in-between steps such as I have been covering in my South Africa essays.

The flight into symbolism also leaves unexamined the phenomenon of British and European soccer hooliganism.

(I sincerely hope that this is what draws you to this site over others: immutable fairness—reasoning from fact and first principles, and not from symbolism. You known how to show your love.)

In any event, read Patrick H’s comment, and have at it (or at me, for that matter):

“I am wondering if you are going to comment on the inadvertent (and thereby revealing) comedy of the destruction by liberalism of the World Cup soccer tournament in South Africa.

The agent of liberal destruction is a horn. Specifically, a long plastic device called the vuvuzela. The employment by South African spectators of the vuvuzela as incessant accompaniment to the soccer matches on the pitch has–and I must insist I am not exaggerating–destroyed the experience of viewing the games almost completely. The use–constant, unrelenting–of this, ah, instrument, by thousands of fans produces a tuneless monotonous drone or hum that operates at the level of a roar (a bit like a bunch of great big kazoos might do–but without any melody). And it simply never stops. The effect on television presentations is remarkable. It sounds like the games are being played in a hive full of thousands of gigantic bees. All other sound is effectively eliminated: crowd roars come through dimly–probably because the vuvuzela-ists drop their horns to join in the collective huzzah when an occasional ball wanders near the net–but chants are gone. Singing: gone.” ….

UPDATE (June 16): As a courtesy to one of my readers I commented in passing on this topic. Larry Auster and one of his readers have decided to die on a molehill over my criticisms off this tack, framing it, grandiosely, as an “objection.”

They’d like to commandeer my blog to indulge this pettiness. Sorry.

I care not a whit as to how conservatives argue—increasingly they sound to me as irrational and emotional as liberals.

Larry’s reader claims the missive was farce; fair enough. Yet Larry wishes to continue debating the thing (on my blog) as if it were not; as though horn blowing as emblematic of a liberal/atavistic society were a serious argument.

Both refuse to plug their logical lacuna—explain European soccer hooliganism. It’s not that hard. The idea, moreover, of proceeding from the particular to the general is surely predicated on galvanizing more than one fact in support of your case. In the case of South Africa, that too is easy.

As one wag put it, “South Africa has blown it,” but I’d argue—and I’d have facts, not feelings, on my side—that it’s not necessarily the noisy horns that signify the end of civilization there and the triumph of liberal egalitarianism; it’s the piling bodies, looting of land and property, radical affirmative action (BEE), etc.