Tuesday, April 29, 2008

ORWELLIAN TIMES

Victor Davis Hanson has it absolutely correct:

One of the strangest things about the NAACP Wright pseudo-scientific speech on learning, and its enthusiastic CNN coverage and analysis, was the abject racialism of Wright. It was sort of an inverse Bell-Curve presentation, based on assumed DNA differences.

His convoluted explanation of African-American right-brain 'oral' culture as more creative, musical, and spontaneous versus European left-brain traditional analysis could never have been given by someone white to that audience without justifiably earning booing and catcalls.

Three comments: this was just the sort of racist 'genetic' difference that most Americans learned to shun, now apparently quite acceptable again, and part of the mainstream.

Second, there is no evidence that so-called Europeans could not "rap" or create an oral literature as well as Africans — remember, oral poetry as we know it , began with bards like Homer somewhere in the southeastern Aegean and continued into modern times in the Balkans.

Three, some of the most accomplished speakers of English and analytical thinkers are African-Americans, a fact everyone immediately recognizes from what they read and with whom they speak.

In short, Wright's speech on black-right brainers, white-left brainers — replete with bogus stereotypes and crude voice imitations — was about as racist as they come and at one time antithetical to what the NAACP was once all about. Again, the Obama campaign and its appendages have set back racial relations a generation.


The other day, Mark Steyn, wrote about how the leftist Australian columnist Pamela Bone who recently died of cancer and who came to question some of the behavior and rhetoric of her side of the political aisle. She asked:

Why, in short, have Left and Right changed places?


Good question, Pamela. Because certainly your side of the political spectrum has managed to betray everything they ever claimed they stood for.

Today’s political left pretty much stands for nothing—not freedom, not equal opportunity; not individual rights; not peace and certainly not social justice or brotherhood. Trying to right the wrongs and injustices of the world is truly ethical and noble goal, but something happened on the road to that beautiful utopia. The left made a wrong turn and got lost--somewhere in the vicinity of Vietnam, I suspect.

At this very moment, every issue ardently supported by the left, and almost all of the behavior exhibited by the left is completely antithetical to classical liberal philosophies. There is no longer a commitment to personal liberty or to freedom. The Left is far too busy to promote freedom for the common man or woman, because their time is taken up supporting the bigotry and hate of Reverend Wrights. They are far too preoccupied in advocating freedom and tolerance for tyrants and dictators who oppress the common man; and in lionizing and protecting terrorists who kill the common man; not to mention heralding religious fanatics who subjugate the common woman.

I wrote:

The classical liberal tradition is now almost exclusively upheld by what are called “conservatives”. Once “liberal” was synonymous with the “left”. No longer.

What we have witnessed over the 30- 45 years since the Left ascended to dominate political thought in the mid 20th century, is its rapid and unprecedented decline into wholesale intellectual and moral bankruptcy. The noble values and ideals they once stood for have been abandoned; and almost as if a surreal cosmic joke was being played on them, they have—without even noticing!-- embraced the exact opposite of what they once stood for.

Where once they stood for freedom; they now enable dictatorships and apologize for tyrants. Where once they sought to bring justice to the world; they now defend horrific acts of mass murder and enslavement. Where once they rightly demanded equal opportunity, they have embraced all kinds of racial quotas and discriminatory practices and demand equality of outcome. Where once they sought to empower the weak; they are now instrumental in maintaining and expanding their victimhood.

After all, how can you be a “champion of the oppressed” unless you maintain and nurture an oppressed class that will always require your services to help them?


Jeremiah Wright and his ilk are actually extremely necessary to the left's ultimate political agenda. Candidates like Obama who embrace Wright's ideas are now at the forefront of the party and given standing ovations and superstar status for their vapid promises and vague rhetoric. Moral relativism has become a true art form in leftist intellectual circles; and rational thought and truth are both decried as oppressive and restraining to humanity. Bigotry and racism are considered good when practiced by the clueless morons of the left--because they mean well and only seek to right wrongs and bring about social justice in the earnestly desired utopia they can still see in their mind's eye but which seems to be so damn elusive in the real world. If only we'd all do as they say.

In short, the left has embraced the ideology of nothingness; they are now the pimps and apologists for terrorists; and they speak the empty rhetoric of a brave, new world.

Orwellian times, indeed.

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