printIn the words of the inimitable Hans-Hermann Hoppe: “If you are not called a racist, then, it seems to me, you are in intellectual trouble and it is high time to reconsider your own thinking. Professor Hoppe was attempting to console me, after someone marked us both with that Mark of Cain.
Now, based on my last column, Rah-Rah for Rioters, Connie Deady of The Reform Club implies the same:
“It is offensive to me to suggest that something is lacking in a race of people. Just because Jews at a different time and place were able to rise above doesn’t mean another race in another time should be able.
Or maybe I misunderstand [Ilana’s] point. I suspect that being hated might make one work harder. I don’t know that everyone hates Jewish people. Maybe they are jealous? I tend to think that Jewish people as a race are smarter than the rest of us.
I stated that Chinese and Jews have 1) overall endured far greater depredations in modern times than Muslims and African-Americans (notwithstanding category overlap). 2) Have coped with such contingencies admirably while Arabs and blacks… not so much.
Is this not an observation of reality? Am I not stating an objective fact? So why is realism framed as racism? Dare discomfit people with unsettling facts, and they threaten to tarnish your reputation with damaging labels; tell the truth, and, it would seem, you risk your reputation.
That pretty much sums the direction in which discourse has been steered.
Note that Ms. Deady gets herself into a bit of a bind with a performative contradiction—she herself observes aggregate trends among groups.