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Entry: Race, Nationalism, and Patriotism, Part I: Race Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/race_nationalism_and_patriotism_part_i_race#15494 Post contents: This article has the loss and the gain, and, I’m happy to say, more gain than loss. I point out first the loss Fallacy #1: <i> The references to racial differences in these documents are not rejections of such differences, but acknowledgments of them.</i> The Fallacy: “Because someone talks about something, it must be important.” A non sequitur. People talk about UFOs. Does that make them important? The <i>refutation</i> of UFOism might be important. <i>A fortiori</i> so also the Church’s refutation of racialism, something that is not only non-existent but also has caused enormous suffering. The Church does NOT acknowledge race; She acknowledge that racialism is a very bad ideology. By the way, Praise God that Mr. Richert isn’t arguing that Paul VI was a bad man. Fallacy #2: <i>In fact, most of the anti-racialists hold, at root, the same assumption as the racialists. For both, race matters more than anything else</i> Simply false. Anti-racialists are anti-racial not because race would be important or even less because it would be the most important thing, but because point of fact that race has no importance, and that racialism has caused great suffering. (Other bad ideas have caused suffering as well.) Fallacy #3 <i>against empirical evidence. </i> What evidence, empirical, scholarly, or scientific? There’s “empirical” evidence that people have blue and brown eyes. What’s lacking empirical evidence – or any evidence – is that blue and brown eyes, or lighter or darker skin, has some kind of importance other than to manufacturers of sunglasses and suntan oil. <i>We might as well deny that [...]the sun rises in the east.</i> With Copernicus and Galileo, I in fact do deny that the sun rises in the east. The sun doesn’t rise at all; the earth turns. Of course, if one is a mere empiricist, the Sun indeed would circle the earth. Empiricism is inadequate. Falacy #4: <i>St. Paul is clearly not denying the differences between Jews and Greeks, any more than he is denying the differences between male and female or master and slave</i>. False analogy. Gender is indeed a significant category, especially if one wishes children. Eye and skin color are not. Slave and master were cultural, not natural conditions. Surely Mr. Richert isn’t arguing, as Aristotle argued, that certain humans by nature merit being slaves. As for Paul, see the New Perspectives on Paul movement: From Paul’s point of view, Jew and Greek are cultic communities (not ethnoi or “races”). One “gets in” to the the Jewish community and the pagan community differently. The work of the Redeemer provides a different and superior Community, and one "gets in" to it a different way. Fallacy # 4:<i>[...] distinctions between families; between kin groups; between ethnoi; between nations. Yes, all of these are related, in some way, to the question of race.</i> No, they are not related to race, unless Mr. R, correctly, means that <i>moderns</i> tend falsely to so relate them. In which case, I have misunderstood him. With the loss comes the (more significant) gain: i. Mr. Richert correctly points out that racialism is a modern fantasy. The demands of space prevented him from elaboration. Race was a fairy tale told by Arthur Gobineau to justify nationalism and imperialism. I urge him to go the next step: that racialism is not just anti-Catholic, but also anti-conservative. Tory conservatives know that people are the product of history, habit, custom, tradition, ceremony, and religion – NOT of something so risible as “race”. ii. Mr. Richert quite correctly points out that racialism is a Catholic heresy. However he may have come to his conclusion, he has come down in the right place. Aside from the four fallacies above, this is a very good article. I point out the fallacies not out of animosity to him but only because they weaken Mr. Richert’s main point (# ii). Sent at: 2008 09 07