Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Racial Politics - The Double Standard


Mark Steyn discusses the double standard in racial politics in the National Review Online. (Hat tip to Robert Bidinotto.)

How can the left veer so far from their avowed principles and stretch the truth to paint conservatives with the racist brush?

It all boils down to philosophy.

It is really difficult for us regular folks to understand how all of this political correctness and interest groups based on race and gender came about.  How did this stuff suddenly appear on the scene, giving such far-out and/or corrupt people political power over us, our freedoms and our pocketbooks?  How do the member of Congress and their supporters justify what they are doing?  Where did the crazy ideas that they promote come from?  And make no mistake, it is the ideas and their unchallenged belief in them that energizes them -- the philosophy energizes them and gives them the conviction that they are "right" -- and deludes them into believing that they are entitled to subjugate the rest of us, like Martin Heidigger's philosophy justified the Nazis and gave the moral sanction for what they did.

You might remember that a couple of hundred years ago the fortuitous conjunction of grievances against English colonialism and the ascendency of Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke produced a revolution and the construction of a limited government by united states in America based on individual rights.  Historians of philosophy have deemed that the "Modern" period.  But, it did not end there.  There is a subsequent "Postmodern" period of philosophy which now drives the humanities, journalism, political science, and related departments in our formerly great universities, who fill our children with twisted ideas and leave them with "mush for brains."  Modernism in these departments has been supplanted by Postmodernism. 

But what is "Postmodernism?"  To you, I am sure, the entire question is pretty much irrelevant and invisible.  But believe me, it is the fundamental thing that is driving us to ruin and placing us and our grandchildren on the Road to Serfdom.  You need to understand it in order to decide whether you ought to oppose it.  

A few years ago The Atlas Society funded a project by a young philosopher, Stephen Hicks, to write a book explaining Postmodernism.  It is remains in my top 10 books on philosophy -- of course behind Aristotle, Locke, Rand and some others, but there, nevertheless -- because it is both comprehensive and succinct.  It has been available on Amazon and elsewhere for a few years, and I have passed out many copies on my own.  You need to read and understand it.  

Dr. Hicks is posting the book on the web for free at http://www.stephenhicks.org/2009/09/18/explaining-postmodernism-chapter-one-online/.  Please explore what he has to say about the development and nature of Postmodern philosophy and the left's use of it as a pretext to gain political power.  The philosophy is seriously flawed, yet it forms the unstated basis for the development of a very, very dark political and financial future for us, our children, our grandchildren and beyond.  We don't want that to happen.  And we need to gird ourselves, intellectually, for a major battle so that we can recognize and credibly oppose government encroachments cloaked in language such as "diversity" and "equality" when they are intended only to suppress and tax people who produce better than others and to distribute their hard-earned wealth to the favorites of government – a captive population of ignorant followers.



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