Realism Or Racism? (& Excellence Vs. Offal)

English, Literature, Racism, The Zeitgeist

I never tire of commending—and recommending—the generally apolitical Times Literary Supplement for its intellectual rigor. I’m equally energetic when it comes to berating that bit of dreck, the New York Review of Books, for its pamphleteering. The latter’s obtuse art and book critiques, interspersed as they are with lengthy political essays on the undisputed purity of Hamas or Cuban-styled healthcare, fall into the category of agitprop.

In a preface to his review of two books dealing broadly with the fraught topic of racial—or what I term rational—profiling, the TLS’s James Bowman doesn’t disappoint. He quotes the former Education Secretary, William Bennett, who created an uproar by saying that,—If you wanted to reduce crime, you could—if that were your sole purpose—you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.'”

“The remark,” observes Bowman matter-of-fact, “was widely characterized as ‘racist’ and President Bush was called upon to disavow the views of his fellow Republican—and he obliged with that new favorite substitute for moral judgement, the word ‘inappropriate.’ Yet while doubtless tactless—the sort of deliberate provocative comment that delights the philosophy professor, which is what Bennett used to be—his words had been in substance nothing more that a statement of the undisputed fact that in America black people proportionately commit more crimes than whites.” (My emphasis; Bowman’s words)

To underscore my original point, the TLS is generally liberal (although more classically so) but is committed to a heuristic pursuit of truth and excellence. The NYRB is left-liberal and dedicated to the crass promotion of specific political perspectives. If it reluctantly succumbs and discusses “the color of crime,” the “debate” is carefully in root-causes circumlocution and strictly confined to the Three P’s—the pale patriarchy, poverty, and powerlessness. No wonder the TLS is sophisticated and fascinating and the NYRB as pedestrian and dull as any good Bolshevik bulletin.

Realism Or Racism? (& Excellence Vs. Offal)

English, Literature, Racism, The Zeitgeist

I never tire of commending—and recommending—the generally apolitical Times Literary Supplement for its intellectual rigor. I’m equally energetic when it comes to berating that bit of dreck, the New York Review of Books, for its pamphleteering. The latter’s obtuse art and book critiques, interspersed as they are with lengthy political essays on the undisputed purity of Hamas or Cuban-styled healthcare, fall into the category of agitprop.

In a preface to his review of two books dealing broadly with the fraught topic of racial—or what I term rational—profiling, the TLS’s James Bowman doesn’t disappoint. He quotes the former Education Secretary, William Bennett, who created an uproar by saying that,—If you wanted to reduce crime, you could—if that were your sole purpose—you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.'”

“The remark,” observes Bowman matter-of-fact, “was widely characterized as ‘racist’ and President Bush was called upon to disavow the views of his fellow Republican—and he obliged with that new favorite substitute for moral judgement, the word ‘inappropriate.’ Yet while doubtless tactless—the sort of deliberate provocative comment that delights the philosophy professor, which is what Bennett used to be—his words had been in substance nothing more that a statement of the undisputed fact that in America black people proportionately commit more crimes than whites.” (My emphasis; Bowman’s words)

To underscore my original point, the TLS is generally liberal (although more classically so) but is committed to a heuristic pursuit of truth and excellence. The NYRB is left-liberal and dedicated to the crass promotion of specific political perspectives. If it reluctantly succumbs and discusses “the color of crime,” the “debate” is carefully in root-causes circumlocution and strictly confined to the Three P’s—the pale patriarchy, poverty, and powerlessness. No wonder the TLS is sophisticated and fascinating and the NYRB as pedestrian and dull as any good Bolshevik bulletin.

Zoning Free Speech

Bush, Free Speech, Private Property

During a Memorial-Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, the president expressed his “awe of the men and women who sacrifice for the freedom of the United States of America.” Earlier in the day, he had put his “awe” into action by signing

[T]he Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act, passed by Congress largely in response to the activities of a Kansas church group that has staged protests at military funerals around the country, claiming the deaths symbolized God’s anger at U.S. tolerance of homosexuals.
The new law bars protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a national cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery. This restriction applies an hour before until an hour after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.

Bush honors so-called freedom fighters by limiting the freedom for which they allegedly fought? The Act, of course, is an extension of the suppression of peaceful assembly via “free speech zones,” perfected under Bush, and documented here by James Bovard.

The only acceptable limits on speech are 1) those proscribed by private property—you have no right to deliver a disquisition in my living room, unless I allow it. 2) When speech poses a “Clear and Present Danger,” for which the required threshold is extremely high, as it should be. (I’d say that limiting speech is so abhorrent that, to give but one example, the preferred course of action against imams who publicly preach and incite violence against Americans on American soil is deportation, not censorship.)

The Silly Sex?

Feminism, Gender, Logic, Reason

Barbara’s comments here sent me in search of a priceless excerpt from Norah Vincent’s book. Its title is self explanatory: Self-Made Man: My year Disguised as a Man.

Vincent, a lesbian in her regular life, describes dating women while disguised as Ned:

“I listened to [the women] talk literally for hours about the most minute, mind-numbing details of their personal lives; men they were still in love with; men they had divorced, roommates and co-worker they hated…. Listening to them was like undergoing a slow frontal lobotomy. I sat there stunned by the social ineptitude of people to whom it never seemed to occur that no one, much less a first date, would have any interest in enduring this ordeal …”

Seconded in my VDARE.com article, “The Silly Sex?”:

“The Apprentice candidates constitute a restricted sample, chosen for a combination of looks and status. Despite this, the disparities in character and cerebral agility between the men and the women could not be more glaring. An obviously dé class é act, the women would have been utterly risible if they were not so revolting….”

Question: Vincent had clearly dated women before. Had she always found them generally lacking? If not, what changed once she assumed her fictitious identity? I have an idea, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I’m tired.

Answer: Vincent probably dated lesbians, not straight women. The following are generalizations, but nonetheless valid, I believe: the lesbians I’ve known over the years (my sister, for one) are not as petty and self-absorbed as straight women. My best friend in Cape-Town was a beautiful and feminine gay woman. In addition to her keen intellect, we got on famously because she was without pettiness. There was no rivalry in the relationship just good intellectual rapport. I’d say she combined the emotional intimacy and empathic qualities often associated with women and the rationality and clear thinking identified with men. Although I still think that to make people fairer, kinder, and more compassionate, one has to first teach them to think and reason.

About such generalizations: Individualists, libertarians in particular, think that broad statements about aggregate group characteristics are collectivist, ergo 1) forbidden 2) erroneous. This is a confusion—it demonstrates an inability to jump a level of abstraction. Generalizations, provided they are substantiated by hard evidence not hunches, are not incorrect. Science rests on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a representative sample. People make prudent decision in their daily lives based on probabilities and generalities. That one chooses not to live in a particular crime-ridden area, for example, in no way implies that all residents there are criminals.

Men and women do in general display a different emotional and intellectual make-up, but this doesn’t preclude countless individuals from transcending the stereotypes associated with their gender. True, Oprah’s target market is huge—distressingly so. But a lot of women are not prone to becoming addled by Oprah.