Tenderness Leads to the Gas Chamber
Why are liberals so desperately attached to egalitarianism, of an extreme and entirely this-worldly variety? Why has it become an article of faith to which they cling against all evidence--to the point where they resist the use of epidemiological data that breaks down heart disease rates, for instance, by race? In his recent response to me, Richard takes this attachment as a given. What I tried to do was to explain it.
Secular moderns, who have no actual reason to regard human life is sacred, still wish that it were. This is because they regard their own as sacred, expect that others should do so, and rightly feel that they should return the favor. (This distinguishes them from, for instance, sociopaths.) They base their rationale for respecting the lives and dignity of others on this principle of reciprocity. “I owe my neighbor respect and fair treatment because he’s a person, just like me.”
The problem with such a transaction is that it’s based not on some higher philosophical truth, or a tenet of divine Revelation, but a simple deduction based on an intuition--that others really are like me. And the closer they are to me, the more respect they deserve. The history of colonialism, for instance, suggests how much easier it is to act in a bloody and brutal way toward people who look radically Other, whose customs can be classed as “barbaric” or even “bestial.” When conquistadors and the like acted on this intuition and butchered or enslaved the natives they encountered, it was typically members of the clergy who served as the only (not always effective) restraint on their rapaciousness. Why did the Church in Spain intercede with the Crown to protect the lands and rights of Latin America’s Indians? Because the bishops and theologians of Salamanca based their ethics not on empathy but on an abstraction--the assertion that every member of the human species stands in some sense equal before the God Who made them.
Modern liberals don’t like to study history--except for the bits where white males clapped chains on darker peoples and took away their stuff. Those are the “good parts” (like the once-treasured sexy scenes in James Joyce) on which they linger. I was tempted to call such reading a frenzy of onanistic guilt, but in fact modern multiculturalists aren’t really identifying with the Other. The “Other” in this case is the patriarchal Caucasian oppressor, while the liberal reader identifies with the hapless natives--or best of all, with the rare white person protesting their mistreatment, such as Bartolomeo de las Casas. “That’s what I would have done if I were there,” these well-meaning moral narcissists tell themselves, as they read Schindler’s List on the commuter rail into Grand Central from Old Saybrook. “I would have lived in peace with the Indians. I would have pissed on the fire for Joan of Arc. I would have saved Anne Frank.”
However, the introspective among the liberals understand just how fragile is a moral empathy based on identification. They know, for instance, that they don’t really regard gun-toting, Confederate flag-waving Nascar fans as human in QUITE the same way as the Vassarites waiting beside them on line at Zabar’s. The unborn have to be dehumanized right up front, to polish one’s feminist credentials. (This is particularly important for straight male academics who hope to have sex occasionally. One sees a lot of “nookie feminists” across the barricades at abortion mills.) The handicapped? Well, they’re a mixed bag. On the one hand they’re “disadvantaged,” and thus a group to be championed against evil corporations (or even mom-and-pop businesses that can’t afford to install a wheelchair lift). They have a “right” to demand that every bus in the city be equipped to give them “equal access,” and to open-ended special education programs at taxpayer’s expense. On the other hand, all that TLC is kind of expensive… so if parents don’t “feel comfortable” with (for instance) Down’s Syndrome kids, why should the government interfere? Every child who gets out of the womb alive with some handicap is going to cost us millions.... As will all those inner city kids who’d get born if we closed the clinics. And come to think of it, isn’t it a sinful waste of money to keep those terminal patients alive, when the money could be better spent in Darfur? Or refurbishing Lincoln Center? So why not use technology to make damned sure that “every child is above average”?
Such dark and ruthless sentiments are only natural. I feel them too. A quick confession here: When I heard the news about 9/11 (I lived in Queens but had friends working downtown), my first thought was: “O my God! Please don’t let them hit the Chrysler Building! Or the Woolworth! Or the Empire State...” My mind ran through all the actually beautiful buildings I hoped would be spared… before I remembered that the Twin Towers were surely full of people. And then I thought, “There will always be more people, but they’ll never let you build towers like those again.” It was my very own Margaret Sanger moment.
But unlike secular liberal Pelagians, I know that my nature is fallen. I know that life is sacred, because an irascible stuttering Jew brought down two stone tablets from a mountain, 2500 3500 years ago. I know that whatever bad news I hear about someone, I won’t regard him as any less human. But barring the philosophically minded, your average secularist has no such solid ground beneath him. He might condemn sex-selective abortion in India, but not because it’s murder. He’s against the practice because it is sexist. This helps explain why Stalin’s and Mao’s mass murders don’t rouse the same reaction as Hitler’s Holocaust: They might have been genocides, but at least they weren’t anti-Semitic. Or homophobic, as far as I can tell.
The grab bag of irrational and unconnected taboos that make up the moral code of a modern liberal leaves him vulnerable to every sort of anxiety, and prone to irrational guilt that can be summoned at the push of a hot-button. My favorite illustration came in one of Ali G‘s British episodes (which I was collecting back in 2002), when the “Wigger” comedian whose real name is Sacha Baron-Cohen, rigged up like a Jamaican gang-banger, provokes London bobbies into busting him. As they drag him off, he demands, “Is it because I is black?” They look startled, and deeply afraid, then mutter, “Uh, no....”
I think that liberals realize that they have no good argument against the notion that life is cheap. In the Hollywood 10, they defended partisans of Stalin, chuckling that “Communists are liberals in a hurry.” They aren’t troubled that some 80% or more of Down’s Syndrome children are now aborted. They’re happy to see embryos cannibalized for parts, so rock stars can get new livers, and Boomers can live an extra 20 years--to pull out the last few bricks from the Social Security pyramid scheme. If you convinced them that high percentages of people of other races really didn’t have the potential to turn into Swarthmore-educated New Urbanists driving Priuses, they’re really not sure how they’d react. Luckily, the taboo against thinking racial thoughts helps steer their scorn towards safer targets--like “bitter” rednecks, fundamentalists, Archie Bunkers, Serbs, (often) Israelis, and other scapegoats who seem to deserve their fate.
P.S. My title is a quote from Walker Percy, via Flannery O’Connor, which comes up in his acid satire The Thanatos Syndrome. Not his best novel, but a powerful tract about the culture of death, and well worth reading.
Comments
“2500 years ago”
3500 years ago.
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Dr. Zmirak: T’was too his best. Leaving that crucial debate aside, however, this question comes to mind: inasmuch as your posts at Taki are, save Taki himself, without remote peer in both content & prose, what say you as to the intimate relation between content & form?
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How odd to see an argument that would overthrow the eminently sensible logic of the Golden Rule in favor of an unhistorical and irrational appeal to the mystical maunderings of the people who brought on the terrors of the Inquisition.
Give me a conservatism based on the concrete interactions of real people rather than the authoritarian theology of bishops and priests.
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“Give me a conservatism based on the concrete interactions of real people rather than the authoritarian theology of bishops and priests” -nbf
You mean concrete actions like war and genocide, chum?
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If your regard for another person is based on his similarity to yourself then would not that regard be closer to conceit that to love? I have often considered the sterotypical “liberal” has something fundamentally in common in your garden variety bigot. Both seem to think human equality is the reason that we should love our fellow man. The difference is that they have different rules in designating who is or isn’t equal.
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There has been far mor war and genocide perpetrated by religous authoritarians than by those who seek mutually beneficial business transactions with their fellow man.
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Also well worth reading is the Flannery O’Connor essay Percy was quoting, her Introduction to a Memoir of Mary Ann. It is among the most powerful things O’Connor ever wrote.
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“When I heard the news about 9/11 (I lived in Queens but had friends working downtown), my first thought was: “O my God! Please don’t let them hit the Chrysler Building! Or the Woolworth! Or the Empire State...” My mind ran through all the actually beautiful buildings I hoped would be spared… before I remembered that the Twin Towers were surely full of people. And then I thought, “There will always be more people, but they’ll never let you build towers like those again.” It was my very own Margaret Sanger moment.”
I liked the WTC just as much as any of the other buildings. I still hope Trump’s plan of re-building the WTC the same way it was comes to fruition
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Excellent post, as usual.
It makes me want to add what is underlying everybody’s thinking:
This world would be perfect, if only everybody would be like me!
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Undoubtedly the Golden Rule or the principle of reciprocity can be viewed in an egocentric manner. Still, I think the problem lies not with the principle of reciprocity, but as I tried to point out in another thread, most people, secularized individuals and nominal Christians, cannot explain why human beings are different from other animals, and why they deserve “special treatment.”
If those who cannot offer a coherent explanation for the “intuition” or ingrained custom and belief behind justice would admit their ignorance, then perhaps they could be convinced of the need for Divine Revelation to teach men that they should not kill one another.
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“This world would be perfect, if only everybody would be like me!”
That’s a horrifying notion. A sensible society of folks like me would have to lock me up.
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“Go in peace my child. You are healed of Political Correctness.”...........Next?
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“I owe my neighbor respect and fair treatment because he’s a person, just like me.” -Zmirak
Leviticus 19:18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
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This world would be perfect, if only everybody would be like me!
Posted by Werner Hoermann
Okay, this is just Orwellian. People here, and many other sites, groups of like thinkers, argue about each others political, moral ideologies and belief systems and now your saying that its good we are different and beat each other senseless...because if we were all conservative or liberal or whatever the world would be peaceful, as Jesus wanted.
Zirmak, stop messing with these peoples minds would ya?
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A liberal (in the politically correct, not classical sense) must justify his or her emotions. A conciousness informed by the spritual legacy mentioned by Zimrack knows that our emotions have been pretty unjustified for the last 2,500, nay 3,500 years and there’s no ready cure apart from taking those two tablets and calling the doctor of souls in the morning.
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The idea is that, once Moses came down from the Mountain, it was obvious to everyone that violating any of the Commandments were deadly.
If you steal, you are violating God Himself, and that is worthy of DEATH. There is no way around arguing about the Commandments. If you believe they are from God Himself, the violating them is DEADLY business.
The problem is, however, that “modern society” is built upon the DIRECT opposition to God’s Commandments. Modern society tells us that God Himself, Jesus, forgives the adulteress, so society ourselves must forgive any and all crimes, lest “those without sin cast the first stone”; that is, modern society has eliminated the ideals of self accusation and humility. The answer becomes: I’m always right because I say I am!
The reality is that humility has been thrown out with the Faith, and American Christianity is no more; Americans are as non-Christian as the pagans they replaced in the New World, and have no legitimate claim to the land, outside of their own legalistic notions.
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welcome HaroldC!
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Conservatives always have to deal with their history and remindered by the left of all the wrongs of their past. Liberals on the other hand see no need to look at their history. The reason? They think that they were always on the correct side of the argument. When the National Socialists of Germany took eugenics too far the left then lumped the Nazi as just another example of right wing parties gone mad. The Left forgets that the Nazis were a left wing party, the were a socialist party gone mad. The liberals on the other hand never dropped the eugenics concept the Nazi’s ruined. It just came back as Planned Parenthood. Ask any lib and they will tell you Planned Parenthood could do no wrong although anyone with a brain not distorted by liberalism will point out the flaws if you ask them.
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Prof. Dr. Z’s latest is one for the files, something increasingly rare at Takimag.
There is a serious problem with the word “liberalism”, if for no other reason than Europeans mean by it what Gringos used to call “conservatism”, real conservatism really not a part of the American tradition—something to lament. What Gringos mean by “ilberalism” is what Europeans correctly call Social Democracy.
The heirs to the real liberal tradition are the libertarians. (So let’s dump the word “liberal” and speak more precisely with “social democrats” and “libertarians")
Dr. Z has put his finger on the one of three serious problems of libertarianism.
The first is that Freedom, for libertarians and even for social democrats is a negative idea. It is against things, not for things. And this is not enough for a cohesive social order. cf. T. S. Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society. Nor will a soldier offer his life for a negative value.
Second, ask libertarians and even social democrats what freedom means positively, the best they can come up with is “doing as one likes”. Arnold faulted this view profoundly. Burke told us that before we let people do as they like, we ought to ask what they like to do!
Third, (and here Dr. Z’s analysis is useful) when confronted with the first two problems, libertarians and social democrats part ways. Libertarians say “your right to swing your fist stops at my nose” (property). But this immediately is a vast restriction on freedom. So libertarians are caught between two driving forces that inevitably conflict: freedom vs property. So libertarians divide between the Lockeans who want The State to stop the fist before the nose, and anti-lockeans who correctly say that the State is the greatest violator of property, and thus the biggest nose buster. Yet such Anti-Lockeans still don’t seem to know how to stop violators of property.
Social Democrats have their own stupid ideas about freedom. Let’s say person A has enough money to free him to buy a flat screen TV. Person B does not have the means and thus isn’t as free. So the Social Democrats tax Person A, take his money, and give it to Person B so that Person B can buy a flat screen TV. This is really what Social Welfare Democracy amounts to.
Which is another way of saying that neither libertarians nor social democrats have a concept of the Common Good.
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The entire founding of modern politics is utterly wrong, something that Hannah Arendt correctly saw. Aristotle, Thomas, and Dante correctly saw that virtues of the honestum, as opposed to the useful virtues, must take first place. For the ancients, the useful virtues were the concern of the household and the market, and the honorable virtues were the concern of politics. Arendt correctly saw that modern politics completely reverses this order and relation. Our honorable virtues are now private matters, and the useful are the realm of politics. The result, she says (correctly), is that we’re going to get such sorry examples of a human being in a figure like Eichmann. cf. her The Human Condition and <Eichmann in Jerusalem</i>.
Aristotle also said that the honorable virtues could be taught, but the moderns (Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hume) assume human being a chiefly, if not exclusively, creatures of passions, largely a violent passion, and can be checked only by another passion, fear. Start out with that modern assumption, and you’re going to get Eichmann as well.
Blame it all on Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau. And I must tell Paul Gottfried that if Lockean grounds are bad, Hobbesian are even worse.
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With all due respect, has the taboo against thinking racial thoughts helps steer your scorn towards safer targets--like Swarthmore-educated New Urbanists driving Priuses?
Your “Liberal"is a strawman. If what it takes to be a Liberal is to mutter to oneself that ““I would have lived in peace with the Indians. I would have pissed on the fire for Joan of Arc. I would have saved Anne Frank”, then I hope that Taki’s Mag is filled with Liberals.
So far as life issues are concerned, I’ve never seen such a collection of would-be eugenicists and Spenglerite xenophobes than on this site. I’ll believe you when I see a column defending the rights of Downs-Syndrome infants, born to illegal immigrants; or crack-babies born to guys with corn-rows and a penchant for rims. Who are you preaching to, John?
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Erich, you misunderstand. I’m not critiquing the liberals for HOPING that they would have saved Anne Frank, etc., but rather for smugly ASSUMING that they would have--when in fact, their treatment of the unborn today suggests… something else. As to “Downs-Syndrome infants, born to illegal immigrants; or crack-babies born to guys with corn-rows and a penchant for rims,” I will certainly defend their right not to be murdered in the womb. Next question?
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Great article. I hate it when liberals whine about stupid things like fighting a $3 trillion war over complete lies that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and turned the world against us. Or when they wine about stupid global warming that every major scientific organization in the world accepts as true, that humans are almost certainly the prime cause of. Tenderness leads to the gas chamber, God hates cowards, USA is #1, lower taxes.
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