Monday, January 11, A.D. 2010

Richert on Race, Nationalism, and Patriotism

On View from the Right, Auster links to an article wherein Scott Richert defends large families—“Multiplication Tables.” After reading Richert’s lovely praise for large families, I looked at his other articles, and I found a three part discussion of race, nationalism, and patriotism from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective: part I, part II, and part III. I highly recommend these short posts, as Richert writes sensibly about issues that rarely are discussed with good sense. In his discussion of race, for example, he states:

Let’s start with the obvious point: Race matters. I know that some people are scrolling down to the comment box already to explain why I’m wrong; why no good Catholic can believe such a thing; to cite St. Paul and Pius XI and Paul VI. In doing so, though, they’re proving my point: If race didn’t matter, what difference would it make that I’ve said that it does? Moreover, the Church, far from rejecting racial differences, assumes that they exist. Don’t believe it?  Then, instead of trotting out St. Paul and Mit Brennender Sorge and Populorum Progresso, actually read them. The references to racial differences in these documents are not rejections of such differences, but acknowledgments of them.

The question is how we proceed once we acknowledge such differences. It is possible to accept racial differences as a fact of life while avoiding the obsessions of both the racialists and the anti-racialists. In fact, most of the anti-racialists hold, at root, the same assumption as the racialists. For both, race matters more than anything else: That’s why the anti-racialists feel compelled, against empirical evidence, to deny the very reality of race, because once they admit it, they believe (as the racialists do) that that reality has to trump everything else. The only way to get past racial obsessions, therefore, is to deny race.

We might as well deny that the sky is blue or that the sun rises in the east.  Race is real; it matters; and, once again, we’re back to the fundamental question: As Christians, what do we do once we acknowledge this reality?

I often find it curious why people are so intent to blind themselves to facts. Do they think that once we acknowledge differences in various populations, then we must adopt the social policies of National Socialism? Is such an illogical jump due to propaganda or to shared assumptions, as Richert suggests? It reminds me of Ann Coulter’s words about the Left’s reaction to The Bell Curve:

Liberals were afraid of a book that told the truth about IQ (“The Bell Curve”) because they are godless secularists who do not believe humans are in God’s image. Christians have no fear of hearing facts about genetic differences in IQ because we don’t think humans are special because they are smart. There may be some advantages to being intelligent, but a lot of liberals appear to have high IQs, so, really, what’s the point? After Hitler carried the secularists’ philosophy to its grisly conclusion, liberals are terrified of making any comment that seems to acknowledge that there are any differences among groups of people — especially racial groups. It’s difficult to have a simple conversation — much less engage in free-ranging, open scientific inquiry — when liberals are constantly rushing in with their rule book about what can and cannot be said.

I suppose that so many Leftists’ commitment to consequentialist morality might also have something to do with their willful ignorance. When one lives in shadow for so much time, eventually, one will not be able to abide in the sun. Error contaminates and spreads in the soul of man.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, January 11, A.D. 2010
Philosophy | Anthropology • Politics • (0) Comments