November 1996

American Renaissance magazine
Vol 7, No. 11 November 1996

 

CONTENTS

The Roots of the White Man (Part I)
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

The Roots of the White Man, Part I

A Reply to Jared Taylor: The origins of our racial characteristics lie in the distant past.

by Edwin Clark

Aristotle

Aristotle

Jared Taylor’s essay on the character of the white race offers many perceptive and even brilliant insights into the qualities that distinguish whites from other peoples. Nevertheless, reading his essay, it seemed to me that someone not familiar with American Renaissance would come away from it thinking that whites are simply natural liberals, genetically disposed to support or exhibit “freedom of speech, rule of law, sportsmanship, republican government, high regard for women, concern for animals and the environment.”

One problem with Mr. Taylor’s catalogue of white racial traits is that they strike me as being largely modern, and while they may indeed be characteristic of whites, I believe they derive from deeper traits that the white race has exhibited throughout its history and in almost all the cultures it has developed. In modern times, these characteristics have often become exaggerated or contorted far beyond their original meaning and functions, so that today these same racial characteristics often contribute significantly to the weakness and decline that now threaten to destroy the white race and its civilization.

My purpose in writing this response to Mr. Taylor’s article is not to fault him but rather to try to move the discussion to a higher or at least a different and less localized plane. By looking at the deep racial-cultural history of whites since ancient times, we discover more profoundly who we are, where we come from, and where we may be going. We may also learn how to control those traits that are now contributing to our destruction and to make use of them and other, more fundamental ones that can help place us back on the path toward what should be our racial destiny.

When speaking of “whites,” I mean the branch of the Caucasian race now generally called “Indo-Europeans,” or what used to be known as “Aryans,” whose descendants today constitute the main part of the populations of Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The term “Aryan” has, for obvious reasons, gone out of fashion, but prior to the rise of German National Socialism, it was a widely accepted anthropological label, and the great archaeologist V. Gordon Ghilde wrote a book entitled The Aryans (1926), which remains a useful survey of what was then known of the origins and early history of the ancestors of European Man.

Aryans Entering India

Aryans Entering India. Illustration from “Hutchinson’s History of the Nations”

Whether we employ the term “Aryan” or “Indo-European,” however, most anthropologists today use these terms merely as linguistic or at most cultural labels and insist that they do not refer to race. Yet this usage seems artificial. The early Indo-Europeans, no matter where they lived or where their remains have been found, were white, and their physical remains, art, and languages reflect their essential racial unity, regardless of the diversity of the subracial stocks into which they eventually divided in various parts of the world and the mixtures with other stocks and races that eventually absorbed many of them.

The Indo-Europeans are thought to have originated in the steppes of Russia and began to move out of that area into what is now eastern and northern Europe, the Near East, and India in the third or second millennium B.C. The earliest known written Indo-European language is the Linear B script of the Greek city-state of Mycenae around 1500 B.C., and it was around this time also that the Aryans invaded India and displaced the dying Dravidian civilizations of the Indus Valley.

In Europe, the Aryan invaders conquered and displaced the non-Indo-European peoples of the archaic megalithic civilization that built Stonehenge and similar colossal monuments. In the Near East and India, the Indo-Europeans conquered many peoples who had created literate, urban civilizations. In some cases, the Aryans were, to a greater or lesser degree, absorbed into the larger populations that they had conquered.

Of particular interest to us are the common features of archaic Indo-European peoples, which continue to shape modern Indo-European-derived beliefs and institutions. As the French folklorist Georges Dumézil has pointed out, one of the principal characteristics of early Indo-European societies is a hierarchical, three-tiered or “tripartite” class structure of priests, warriors, and herder-cultivators. This structure appears to be racially rooted and prefigures many of the societal characteristics we now think of as typically Western or European.

The Indo-Europeanist J.P. Mallory has pointed out one of the central elements of this Indo-European three-class society:

[O]ne of the more obvious symbols of social tripartition is colour, emphasized by the fact that both ancient India and Iran expressed the concept of caste with the word for colour (varna). A survey of the social significance of different colours is fairly clear cut, at least for the first two functions. Indo-Iranian, Hittite, Celtic and Latin ritual all assign white to priests and red to the warrior. The third would appear to have been marked by a darker colour such as black or blue.1

The racial symbolism of such caste colors is obvious, with the higher ranks of society being symbolized by the color associated with the lighter-skinned Aryans and the lower ranks symbolized by the darker hues of the conquered non-Aryan races.

Indeed, racial consciousness among the early Aryans was commonplace. Romila Thapar, a modern Indian scholar, writes:

The first step in the direction of caste (as distinct from class) was taken when the Aryans treated the Dasas [non-Aryans] as beyond the social pale, probably owing to a fear of the Dasas and the even greater fear that assimilation with them would lead to a loss of Aryan identity. Ostensibly the distinction was largely that of colour, the Dasas being darker and of an alien culture . . . The colour-element of caste was emphasized, throughout this period, and was eventually to become deep-rooted in north-Indian Aryan culture. Initially, therefore, the division was between the Aryans and the non-Aryans.2

The Laws of Manu, the ancient Sanskrit code of social obligations for Hinduism, is very explicit about the consequences of interracial marriage:

An unknown man, of no (visible) class but born of a defiled womb and no Aryan, may seem to have the form of an Aryan, but he can be discovered by his own innate activities. Un-Aryan behaviour, harshness, cruelty, and habitual failure to perform the rituals are the manifestations in this world indicating that a man is born of a defiled womb . . . But the kingdom in which these degraded bastards are born, defiling the classes, quickly perishes, together with the people who live there.3

Whatever modern scholars may say about the old Aryans being merely a language group and not a race, that does not seem to be the way the old Aryans themselves looked upon the question.

Dumézil’s “tripartition thesis” shows that the archaic Indo-Europeans throughout the world possessed a remarkably similar social structure and common culture extending well beyond language and including the ordering of society and religion. One of Dumézil’s leading students, C. Scott Littleton, points out a crucial way in which Indo-European societies differed from those of non-Indo-Europeans. “The food-producing class, while distinct from that of the warriors, was nevertheless a much more integral part of the total society . . . The ancient I-E [Indo-European] herdsmen and cultivators — and perhaps the artisans as well — would seem to have played a part in the total ritual and social life of their communities undreamed of by the ancestors of the Egyptian fellahin and their counterparts in Mesopotamia.”4

The subordinate but distinct social and political role for the “third class” ensured a level of participation in the community unknown to the wholly dominated peasants of the Asiatic non-Aryan peoples. This may help account for the eventual appearance of participatory and representative (republican and democratic) political systems among the Aryan peoples.

Moreover, the separation of the military and religious functions into distinct classes points to an early Indo-European tendency toward a distinction between the sacred and the secular that seems to be entirely unique to the Indo-European peoples and which may be the foundation of the later differentiation of science and philosophy from religion in European society, as well as the source of the conflict between secular and ecclesiastical authority in European history.

Finally, this ordering of society and social function was conceived as having supernatural or cosmic sanction and was held to be in accord with the order of nature. Some scholars believe that the tripartite structure of Indo-European society survived into medieval Europe with the division of society into “those who work, those who fight, and those who pray,” and it may also be reflected in the division of political functions into executive, judicial, and legislative in the U.S. Constitution, and even in the Christian idea of the Trinity.

It is possible to extract from the mythology of the Aryans and from the remains of their cultures and literature certain more abstract concepts that seem to be common to most or all Aryan societies and continue to characterize those of their descendants. Perhaps in unconscious accord with the quaint Aryan custom of tripartition, I will try to identify three such traits and to elaborate on their significance. I am fully aware of the speculative nature of these reflections, and welcome any criticisms and comments that might correct or supplement them.

Cosmic Order

(1) The Cosmic Order: It is a widespread feature of early Aryan thought that there exists an objective order that is independent of what we believe or want to believe — in other words, truth. The Rig Veda calls this order rta, a term that may be linked with the word Arya itself, which seems to mean “noble” in The Laws of Manu. The word “Aryan” comes from “Arya” and a number of other Indo-European words seem to be connected — the Greek arete (virtue, the quality of acting like a man, from which we derive “aristocracy”); the Latin ara (altar) and the name “Arthur”. But regardless of the linguistic linkages, the Aryan concept of Cosmic Order contrasts with ideas of the universe found among ancient non-Aryans. For the latter, Cosmic Order is merely the product of will, a creature of magic, and it can change if those who know how to change it wish to do so. If the priests or the divine king did not perform the proper magical rituals, the sun literally would not rise, the Nile would not flood, and food would not grow. In this non-Aryan, magical view of nature, order does not exist as an externally independent and objective arrangement of nature and its functioning.

Aurora borealis

While early Aryans did believe in and practice magic, theirs was not a world-view in which nature and the universe were dependent on magic. Magic could be used to influence nature (through love potions or ointments to make weapons stronger and the like), but nature itself exists apart from the tricks of the magicians and sorcerers. Indeed, throughout Western history, magicians and sorcerers almost always come from pre-Aryan Mother Goddess figures or from the non-Aryan Orient — from Egypt, Babylonia, or the “Magi” of pre-Aryan Persia from whom we get the word “magic.”

Moreover, Indo-European gods are considerably less powerful than the deities adored by the non-Aryans. Zeus, Apollo, Odin, Thor, and the rest did not create the universe and are in fact subject to most of its rules. The subordination of Aryan gods to the regularities of the universe itself points toward a deep Indo-European belief in Cosmic Order, a belief that has major philosophical and ethical implications.

It follows from recognition of the Cosmic Order that some things are true and some aren’t, no matter what you prefer to think, that some things will always and always have been true or false, regardless of your wishes, and that some things will happen or will not happen, whether you like it or not. Hence, the Greek and Nordic ideas of “Fate” or “Destiny,” that some things are beyond the control of the human will and are inevitable because of the very fabric of the universe. The concept of Fate is probably the origin of the principle of causality and the ancestor of such Indo-European ideas as logic, mathematics, philosophy, science, and theology.

While Egyptians and Babylonians collected a great deal of information about mathematics and astronomy and practiced impressive engineering on a grand scale, their “sciences” never had a really scientific basis. Their knowledge existed either as the lore collected by the priests or as the products of practical trial-and-error. Only the Indo-European Greeks actually systematized scientific and mathematical knowledge, and they were able to construct it into a system because the system itself was their concept of a Cosmic Order in which all events and phenomena were related through causality and its inexorable linkages of one event and phenomenon to another.

It is notable that Christian theology itself, as developed under the Scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages and under the influence of rationalistic Greek philosophy, reflects this underlying Indo-European belief, that even God behaves according to certain principles, just as Zeus and Odin did, and it is also interesting that today even Christian fundamentalists who wish to disprove the theory of evolution on behalf of their religious beliefs try to do so through “creation science.” Among Indo-Europeans, even religion and the supernatural are subordinate to the ancient Aryan perception of a Cosmic Order that governs the universe from the remotest galaxies to the life-cycles of insects.

“It is no accident,” wrote V. Gordon Childe, “that the first great advances towards abstract natural science were made by the Aryan Greeks and the Hindus, not by the Babylonians or the Egyptians, despite their great material resources and their surprising progress in techniques  — in astronomical observation for example. In the moralization of religion too Aryans have played a prominent role. The first great world religions which addressed their appeal to all men irrespective of race or nationality, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, were the works of Aryans, propagated in Aryan speech . . . It is certain that the great concept of the Divine Law or Cosmic Order is associated with the first Aryan peoples who emerge upon the stage of history some 3,500 years ago.”5

It is from the Aryan concept of a Cosmic Order that modern white men derive their mental inclinations both to universalism, a tendency to think in terms of generalizations and abstractions that apply universally rather than in terms of the specific, local, and temporary, and to objectivity, the tendency to evaluate events and phenomena with reference to the general and the abstract, rather than to judge them subjectively, as they relate to themselves. While these traits account for many of the achievements of European Man, they also, as we shall see, help to explain many of his racial problems in more recent times.

Ethical Implications

The concept of the Cosmic Order also has important ethical implications, and it was as an ethical system that the ancient Aryans mainly seem to have understood it. Recognition of a Cosmic Order implies that human action has consequences — that you cannot do whatever you please and expect nothing to come of it — and also that sometimes no matter what you do, you will not be able to avoid the consequences of your Fate, what the Greeks and Norsemen respectively called your moira or wyrd. Thus, the central concept of Greek tragedy is that the tragic hero suffers as a consequence of a “tragic flaw” that may not be the result of his will or intent but that his fate is unavoidable. Oedipus was doomed to commit the sacrileges of patricide and incest through his very virtue, and there are many heroes in Greek mythology that encounter similar fates.

'Oedipus and the Sphinx' by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

‘Oedipus and the Sphinx’ by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

The ethical implication that Indo-Europeans drew from this belief is not that man should surrender or fecklessly seek to avoid his fate but rather that he should accept it courageously. Achilles in the Iliad knows that he is fated to die young but, as horrid as death is to Achilles, he readily prefers the glory of his brief heroic life to the obscurity of a long and safe existence. By contrast Gilgamesh, in the Mesopotamian epic, seeks only to avoid death and resorts to all sorts of magic and sorcery to prevent it.

In her survey of Norse myth, H.R. Ellis Davidson notes similar connections between fate, Cosmic Order, and the heroism of both Gods and men:

In spite of this awareness of fate, indeed perhaps because of it, the picture of man’s qualities which emerges from the myths is a noble one. The gods are heroic figures, men writ large, who led dangerous, individualistic lives, yet at the same time were part of a closely-knit small group, with a firm sense of values and certain intense loyalties. They would give up their lives rather than surrender these values, but they would fight on as long as they could, since life was well worth while. Men knew that the gods whom they served could not give them freedom from danger and calamity, and they did not demand that they should. We find in the myths no sense of bitterness at the harshness and unfairness of life, but rather a spirit of heroic resignation: humanity is born to trouble, but courage, adventure, and the wonders of life are matters of thankfulness, to be enjoyed while life is still granted to us. The great gifts of the gods were readiness to face the world as it was, the luck that sustains men in tight places, and the opportunity to win that glory which alone can outlive death.6

The Norse gods know that their race and the world are doomed at the final battle of Ragnarok, but they go out to fight and to meet their fate regardless. The concept of the “Last Stand,” in which an outnumbered army of Aryan warriors face battle against overwhelming odds, usually without any realistic expectation of victory, recurs throughout Indo-European history and legend — at the battles of Marathon and Thermopylae, Horatius at the Bridge, in the Song of Roland, in the Arthurian legends, at Ragnarok itself, or in the fiery climax of Njal’s Saga, and at the Alamo, Rorke’s Drift, and the Little Big Horn.

Indeed, Indo-European scholars have recognized a distinctive Indo-European myth pattern called the “Final Battle.” As J.P. Mallory writes, “The epic traditions of a number of Indo-European peoples preserve an account of the ‘final battle,’ for example, Kurukshetra in the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata; the ‘Second Battle of Mag Tured’ among the early Irish; Ragnarok among the Norse; and several others.”7

Moreover, the Indo-European hero, fighting in single combat, often is killed by treachery or trickery concocted by a non-Aryan or un-Aryan “trickster” figure. Thus Achilles is killed by an arrow shot by the Trojan Paris, Hercules is killed by the trickery of a centaur, Theseus is pushed over a cliff from behind, Baldur is killed by the jealous trickery of Loki, Siegfried is killed by the treachery of his own brother-in-law, etc. It is interesting that in the biblical story of David and Goliath, the latter, a champion of the Aryan Philistines, is killed by the slingshot of David, and in the non-Aryan version recounted in the Old Testament, David’s conduct is portrayed as an act of prowess.

The Aryan concept of Cosmic Order is thus closely linked to the scientific and philosophical achievements of Indo-European Man as well as with his ethical ideas, especially with regard to Indo-European military behavior. The concept of Cosmic Order implied an essentially aristocratic obligation to carry out one’s duty regardless of the consequences but also a heroic recognition of what the consequences, including death and destruction, might be. While other races and cultures have certainly displayed and idealized courage, heroism, and struggle against odds, none has incorporated these ideals into its fundamental world-view and ethic as fully as Indo-European Man.

To say that belief in an external and objective cosmic order, independent of the human will and human action, is characteristic of the Aryan peoples is not to say that such an order actually exists, but rather that the Indo-European mind seems to be structured in such a way (perhaps due to neurological structures and processes peculiar to it), that it naturally thinks in terms of such an order and finds the world incomprehensible without it. In the absence of such a concept, we would be unable to make sense of the phenomena that we perceive; confronted by the mysteries of nature, life, and death, early Aryans sought to understand them by explaining them in terms of mythologies that reflected an underlying belief in a cosmic order and the duties it imposes on mortal men.

Aryan Dynamism

(2) Faustian dynamism: This is the quality that Oswald Spengler described as the unique trait of what he called the “Western Culture,” characterized by the “Faustian soul, whose prime-symbol is pure and limitless space, and whose ‘body’ is the Western Culture.”8 In a general sense, Spengler is referring to the innovative, aggressive, creative, mobile, aspiring, inventive, and daring qualities that have always characterized Indo-Europeans.

OswaldSpengler

Oswald Spengler

Spengler also sharply distinguished the Western Faustian Culture from the “Apollinian” and “Magian” Cultures of the classical age and the Near East, but in fact in the broader sense in which we are using the term here, the Greeks and Romans were also Faustian, and the Greek myth of Prometheus, the Titan who defied Zeus by giving mankind the gift of fire and was condemned to eternal torture because of his disobedience, is as much a Faustian myth as the Germanic legend of Faust himself, who dared to bargain with the Devil to gain knowledge and power and lost his soul because of his bargain.

Many Greek heroes exhibit similar traits of daring and eventually come to grief because of them, and these myths functioned not only as expressions of the Faustian tendencies of the Aryan people to push against limits and transgress established boundaries but also as cautionary tales that tried to warn men of the consequences of carrying their natural proclivities too far. While there is a superficial resemblance between these myths and the Hebraic story of Adam and Eve, there is also a significant difference. While Indo-European heroes often meet their doom because of or despite their heroism, Adam and Eve get kicked out of Eden merely because they disobeyed Yahweh. Neither one did anything particularly admirable or heroic, in contrast to Prometheus, Achilles, Hercules, Theseus, and many other Greek and Aryan heroes.

The dynamism of the Aryans is clear enough in their earliest and most obvious habit of invading other peoples’ territories and conquering them. All of these early Aryans were intensely warlike, and their gods, myths, and heroes reflect their devotion to the martial virtues of courage, discipline, honor, the goodness of conquest, and skill in arms and sports. Virtually everywhere they moved, they conquered, though their smaller numbers in comparison with the receiving populations usually meant that sooner or later they would be absorbed into the people they overcame in battle. This was certainly their eventual fate in India and the Near East, but in Europe, despite a certain amount of racial mixture and cultural assimilation of pre-Aryan beliefs and institutions, they survived largely intact, probably because the receiving population was smaller and not as different from the conquerors as in Asia.

Archimedes before his death with the Roman soldier

The dynamism of the early Aryans is also clear in their interest in travel, maritime exploration, colonization, and discovery. The Semitic Phoenicians also displayed great skill in this regard, but the Greeks equalled or excelled them in establishing colonies throughout the Mediterranean, exploring the Atlantic and African coasts, and penetrating as far as the Indian Ocean and the Far East, perhaps even circumnavigating Africa. The most famous traveler of antiquity was the historian Herodotus, who traveled all over the Near East and Egypt and invented the very concept of history in his account of his travels and the conflict between Greece and Persia.

Alexander of Madecon was a living incarnation of Aryan dynamism, conquering wherever he led his army and penetrating where no Greek had ever gone before. The racial cousins of the Greeks in late medieval Europe and the Viking adventurers of the early middle ages surpassed the Greeks, discovering the Americas and in the case of the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, and British, conquering new empires in Africa, Asia, and North and South America. The conquistadors of South America and the pioneers and settlers of North America reveal the same dynamic restlessness as the Germanic tribes that descended upon the Roman Empire. Their descendants today in the Aryan nations of the West stand on the edge of transcending them in their expansion into outer space itself.

But Aryan dynamism is not confined to military conquest and geographical exploration. It is also clear in the Faustian demand to understand nature. Just as Aryan warrior nomads overturned whatever cities and peoples stood in their path, so Aryan scholars and scientists, beginning with the Ionian philosophers of early Greece, have conquered nature and its mysteries, discarding myths, religions, and superstitions when they presented obstacles to their knowledge, and systematizing their discoveries and thought according to the Cosmic Order. Alexander the Great’s solution of the Gordian Knot by simply slashing it to pieces with his sword is no less a racial trait of Aryans than the scientific achievements of Plato and Aristotle, Galileo and Newton, and hundreds of other scientists who were heirs of the ancient Aryans and who slashed through obscurantism and mythologies with their minds. Their descendants have cured diseases, shrunk distances, raised cities out of jungles and deserts, constructed technologies that replace and transcend human strength, restored lost languages, recovered forgotten histories, stared into the hearts of distant galaxies, and reached into the recesses of the atom. No other people has ever even dreamed of these achievements, and in so far as other peoples even know such things are possible, it is because they have learned about them from European Man.

Afrocentrists, in their resentful and pathetic bitterness against whites, today pretend that it was their ancestors who created European civilization. The irony of their pretense is that their claims inadvertently acknowledge the superiority of the very civilization they hate, even as they try to claim it as their own. As for other civilized peoples, the Faustian dynamism of the Aryan race and civilization stand in stark contrast to the static primitivism and never-changing dullness that characterize the “fellahin” peoples of Asia, immersed in the fatalism and world-denying religions of the East. In travelogues and National Geographic, we are treated to picturesque accounts of the almost animal existences of these peoples, whose lives, work, and minds are often described as being “just what their ancestors were a thousand years ago.” No phrase more accurately describes the differences between the perpetual passivity of the non-Aryan and the world-conquering activism and dynamism of the Aryans.

Critics of the Indo-Europeans often like to deflate Aryan contributions by pointing to the lateness of Aryan achievements in ancient times and by emphasizing that most of the basic inventions that made civilization possible were of non-Aryan origin. It is true that at the time the Aryans invaded Europe, the Near East, and India, literate, urban civilizations had flourished in those regions for some centuries or millennia and that the Aryans often merely destroyed whatever lay in their paths. It is also true that inventions like the wheel, the alphabet, the compass, the stirrup, gunpowder, and printing were not of Aryan origin.

But the point is that while other, non-Aryan civilizations may have invented these tools, only when they fell into the hands of the dynamic Aryans did they lead to enduring achievements. The Phoenicians invented the alphabet, but neither the Phoenician language nor its literature survives today. Egyptians and Sumerians built cities, empires, and great temples long before history knows of the Aryans, but today their cities, empires, and temples lie in ruins; their languages are known only to scholars, and only Indo-European scholars care about them. The Chinese may have invented the compass, gunpowder, printing, and the stirrup, but only Indo-Europeans have applied these inventions to the economic, political, and cultural conquest of the Earth. These achievements are due to the intrinsic dynamism, the Faustian creativeness, of the Indo-European mind and remain unparalleled by any other human race.

As for the lateness of Indo-European achievements, this is mainly a function of the geography of the “Aryan Homeland” in the Russian steppes, a region that furnishes few materials for building cities and lasting structures. What is striking about the Aryans, however, is that they did not remain in those regions; they conquered other, more desirable territories, took what they liked or needed from those they conquered, and over a period of about a millennium and a half after 1500 B.C. created a distinctively Aryan civilization that endures today. Those who repeat or swallow the cliche that “while white men were still running around in animal skins in northern Europe, non-Europeans were building cities and empires in Egypt and Asia” need to reflect that there were very few people at all in northern Europe at that time and that as soon as those who lived there or on the steppes became conscious of themselves as a people, they moved out of the north, conquered more comfortable climates, founded what we know today as Greece, Rome, Persia, and the Indo-Aryan civilization, and proved to be unstoppable by other, more civilized peoples who are now forgotten or remembered only because Indo-European scholarship has resurrected and preserved them.

Self-rule

It is also the dynamism of Indo-European man that accounts for the comparative absence of “Oriental despotism” in the political history of the Aryan peoples. Both Greece and Rome were originally ruled by kings, but the kings were never absolute monarchs and were elected or confirmed by the aristocratic warrior classes. Very early in their histories, the kings were dethroned, and republics, also originally aristocratic, were established. The Roman historian Tacitus noted similar institutions among the warrior bands of the ancient Germans, whom he held up in part as models of virtue against whom the decadent Romans of his day fell short. The passive proclivities and static tendencies of non-Aryans render them easy to subjugate in such highly autocratic empires as those of Asia and ancient Egypt, imposed by slave armies often driven by whips and ruled by “god-kings” and colleges of priests armed with secret magical knowledge. It is almost impossible to dominate Aryans in this way for very long.

"The United States Senate, A.D. 1850"

“The United States Senate, A.D. 1850” (engraving by Peter F. Rothermel): Henry Clay takes the floor of the Old Senate Chamber; Vice President Millard Fillmore presides as John C. Calhoun (to the right of the Speaker’s chair) and Daniel Webster (seated to the left of Clay) look on.

Greece not only gives us the word “democracy,” but also the term “tyranny,” which describes illegitimate rule. There is little in non-Indo-European thought similar to this concept. While Asiatic history is full of palace coups, harem intrigues, assassinations, and uprisings led by one minor potentate or another against a despot, all that ever happens, from the days of the Pharaoh Akhnaton to the assassination of Anwar Sadat, is the replacement of one autocrat by another. By contrast, the histories of Greece, Rome, and medieval and modern Europe are filled with acts of tyrannicide, political reforms, establishments of law codes and constitutions, baronial rebellions, peasants’ uprisings, and eventually full-scale revolutions in which a dynamic race seeks to resist being reduced to slavery. Those despots who have gained power over Aryan peoples usually never last very long, and those who overthrow or assassinate them usually become heroic figures. The individuality and dynamism of Indo-European man simply does not tolerate one man or institution monopolizing all the power and dictating to everyone else.

This is clear enough in the histories of Greece and Rome, but it is also true of the ancient Germans. Historian Francis Owen thus describes the ancient Germanic political institutions:

The state, if one may use that term, was composed of all the free men of the community. On certain occasions all the free men were called together, to give assent to certain projects which had already been considered by the council of elders and leaders. The assembly had the power to reject such proposals, and instances are known when such assemblies forced on the leaders a policy of war, because peace had become monotonous, and the hope of booty was a strong lure.

These assemblies also had the power to elect the leaders in time of war, who for the time being had almost dictatorial power.9

Already in prehistoric times, then, the Germanic peoples exhibited an archaic form of republicanism that was fundamentally aristocratic in nature. The “free men” of the community did not include all inhabitants but “the great mass of independent landowners and the wealthier or more aristocratic class of recognized families, which might be called the nobility.”10 The unfree, or “thralls,” had no vote or standing in the assembly. The free men were also those who bore arms, and Tacitus describes their assemblies and how they conducted them.

On matters of minor importance only the chiefs debate; on major affairs, the whole community. But even where the commons have the decision, the subject is considered in advance by the chiefs . . . It is a drawback of their independent spirit that they do not take a summons as a command; instead of coming to a meeting all together, they waste two or three days by their impunctuality. When the assembled crowd thinks fit, they take their seats fully armed . . . If a proposal displeases them, the people shout their dissent; if they approve, they clash their spears. To express approbation with their weapons is their most complimentary way of showing agreement.11

When the Framers of the American Constitution guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms, “being necessary to the security of a free State,” they were following this ancient Aryan custom of the assembly of armed free men, and much the same custom was observed among the early Greeks and Romans.

Founding Fathers

Owen points to the dynamic quality of the ancient Germans as the ultimate reason for their disunity as well as their liberty, which characterized the warring kingdoms of medieval as well as modern Europe:

But there were other more fundamental reasons why it was not possible to create a unified German state. These reasons are intimately connected with the inherent Germanic love of independence, the spirit of individualism and the respect for personality. These are all highly desirable qualities, but in an exaggerated form they do not facilitate the formation of political unity beyond a limited geographical area.12

The natural form of government among the Aryan peoples, then, appears to be this kind of aristocratic republic, tending toward democracy but with well-recognized rights and duties for non-aristocrats.

A limited democracy thus has deep racial and cultural roots among Europeans, but it properly derives from those roots, not from the rootless ideologies that today have grotesquely expanded it far beyond its natural role. The natural Aryan aristocratic republicanism is a form of government encouraged by the tripartite structure of Indo-European society; by its distinctions and balances between the warrior, priestly, and producer classes; by its tendency to separate the sacred from the secular; and by the apparently innate dynamism of the Aryan race itself, which resists and rebels against any effort to impose autocratic rule or to induce the passivity that allows despotism to flourish.

“Medized” (i.e., adopted the customs of the Medes or Persians and other Asians) as people who were alienated from their own institutions and who might harbor ambitions of enslaving their own people. In Rome the great model for despotism was Egypt, after Julius Caesar dallied with Cleopatra, and both Caligula and Nero tried to imitate Egyptian and Asiatic despotism (both were assassinated). Yet the Asiatic-Egyptian model of autocracy eventually triumphed, as Rome’s racial composition altered with the importation and emancipation of large masses of foreign slaves and immigrants, and it was from this model that the Roman Catholic Church developed its own ideas of papal absolutism, which in turn were copied by the monarchs of the medieval and early modern periods. Despotism, even in its European forms, is not naturally an Indo-European institution but derives ultimately from alien peoples.


1J.P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), 133.

2Romila Thapar, A History of India (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1966), 37-38.

3The Laws of Manu, ed. and trans. Wendy Doniger (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 10: 57-61

4C. Scott Littleton, The New Comparative Mythology: An Anthropological Assessment of the Theories of Georges Dumézil (rev. ed., Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), 224.

5V. Gordon Childe, The Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins (1926; reprint ed., New York: Dorset Press, 1987), 4-5.

6H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964), 218.

7Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans, 129-30.

8Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (2 vols.; trans. Charles Francis Atkinson; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), I, 183.

9Francis Owen, The Germanic People: Their Origin, Expansion and Culture (New York: Dorset Press, 1990), p. 154.

10Ibid., 153.

11Tacitus, Germany, trans. H. Mattingly and S.A. Handford, ch. 11.

12Owen, The Germanic People, 155.

Edwin Clark is an Indo-European writer living in Washington, D.C. “The Roots of the White Man” will conclude in the following issue.

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IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Church Burnings Update

The con game about a non-existent racist plot to burn down black churches has been so brazen that even a few mainstream organizations have decided that enough is enough. A Washington-based organization called the Institute for Religion and Democracy has just released a report on how the National Council of Churches (NCC) hit upon the hoax as a way to raise money for unpopular, “progressive” causes.

A large part of the report details the lurid career of Don Rojas, the black man who is supposed to administer the nearly $10 million that the NCC has accumulated in its Burned Churches Fund. For four years, Mr. Rojas worked for the Communist regime of Maurice Bishop in Grenada, first as editor of the party newspaper and then as press attaché to Prime Minister Bishop. Mr. Rojas was the real thing, raving about “the comrades in Cuba” and describing political enemies as “imperialist lackeys.” His government service came to an end only when the United States invaded Grenada in 1983 and overthrew the Bishop regime. Mr. Rojas then removed to Havana, where he served as secretary for propaganda and information of the Anti-Imperialist Organizations of the Caribbean and Central America. In the early 1990s, he edited the anti-white Amsterdam News in Harlem.

Although Mr. Rojas has no church-related experience, he was hired by the NCC’s Associate General Secretary for Racial Justice (!), Mac Charles Jones, to dish out the money. Rev. Jones is a standard-issue “activist” minister who has unbosomed the view that the election of Ronald Reagan meant “it was OK to be racist again” in America. In his younger days he organized a support committee for Angela Davis, then leader of the U.S. Communist Party. (Mark Tooley, IRD Special Report, Sept. 1996, Institute on Religion and Democracy.)

The October issue of Commentary also contains a good account by Michael Fumento of the trickery engaged in by the National Council of Churches and the “watch-dog group,” the Center for Democratic Renewal, in promoting the hoax about church burnings. Better still, the article goes further and places much of the blame where it really belongs: on the media. Mr. Fumento notes that although Fred Bayles of the Associated Press won an award for his work showing the real extent of the so-called church-burning epidemic, only a handful of subscribers to the AP actually ran his stories. The New York Times, for example, mentioned the church burnings in more than 100 articles — some of them huge — but never touched on the questions raised by Mr. Bayles and other critics.

Mr. Fumento draws the right conclusions:

One would think at least some journalists might have been led to wonder what this episode says about the way ‘news’ is manufactured, packaged, and shipped these days, or to reflect on their own role in plunging so many Americans into a paroxysm of utterly baseless recrimination . . . As for admitting that they were wrong, and wildly irresponsible, that is a prospect apparently too horrible for them to contemplate. (Michael Fumento, Politics and Church Burnings, Commentary, October, 1996, pp. 57ff.)

Meanwhile, another “racist threat” to black churches has proven to be a hoax. A black woman named Gloria Taylor has been arrested for mailing letters, filled with slurs and swastikas, threatening to kill blacks and burn black churches. She was caught by means of a DNA match with the saliva used to seal the envelopes. (Woman Charged With Sending Hate Mail, Tallahassee Democrat, Sept. 20, 1996. p. 4B.)

Multiracialism Where it Hurts

A mulatto immigrant from the Caribbean has been crowned Miss Italy for 1996. The victory of Denny Méndez, daughter of a Dominican mother and Italian father, caused considerable soul-searching in Italy about a “changing national identity.” Two members of the Miss Italy judging panel were suspended for saying that a black woman could not represent Italian beauty. One, who was later reinstated, defended herself by asking whether China could be imagined selecting a Miss China who was not obviously Chinese, or whether a Miss Senegal could be anything but black?

In the end, after much public discussion, Miss Méndez was chosen by a large margin that appears to have included a large number of we’re-not-racists votes. “The contest ended under a sort of blackmail,” said one of the judges, Enrico Mentana. “Not to elect Denny would mean looking like a Class-B country.” He argued that Miss Méndez was hardly the most beautiful woman in the contest.

Others have pointed out a certain hypocrisy in complaining about a mulatto Miss Italy. No one seems to mind when black “Italians” win medals in the Olympics or play on the national soccer team. The respectable position to take on the Miss Italy question appears to be that it was only a matter of time. Even Prime Minister Romano Prodi weighed in with a view: “Italy is changing . . . This too is a sign.” (Celestine Bohlen, Italians Contemplate Beauty in a Caribbean Brow, New York Times, Sept. 10, 1996.)

Genetic Defenses Against AIDS

Doctors have discovered a genetic defense against AIDS that is found in some whites but in no blacks. The genetic resistance was determined in a study of 1,900 American men who have either been exposed to AIDS repeatedly or who have been HIV-positive but have not come down with the disease. A small number of whites, who have inherited the gene from both parents, appear to be completely immune from AIDS. Those who have inherited it from only one parent are strongly resistant to it. No Africans have been found who appear to have inherited the gene from either parent.

Current theories as to the origin of this genetic difference attribute it to the effect of plagues that afflicted whites but not blacks. Europe in the Middle Ages had an urban, commercial economy with population centers large enough to permit the quick spread of disease. Africa probably could not have had the equivalent of the Black Death of 1346 because its population was small and dispersed. A mutation that protected some whites against the plague may be protecting their descendants today against AIDS. (Laurie Garrett, Study Finds Genetic Resistance to HIV Common in White People, The Advocate (Baton Rouge), Sept. 17, 1996, p. 11A.)

‘Racism’ and Censorship in France

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the National Front in France, has provoked a potentially sinister reaction by uttering a few truthful words. On two occasions in September, he publicly observed that at the Olympic Games there was an “obvious inequality between the black race and the white race.” One French parliamentary deputy immediately called this “racism” and “an injury and a threat to human rights.” There were calls that Mr. Le Pen’s nationalist political party be banned.

Even more astonishing, the “conservative” government in France appears likely to pass a law intended specifically to muzzle Mr. Le Pen. It wants to ban “distribution of racist or xenophobic messages,” which are defined as attacks on the “dignity, honor or reputation of a person or groups by reason of their . . . ethnicity, nation, race or religion.” Punishment would be fines of up to $60,000 and a year in jail. Only a few scattered voices have been raised in opposition to this law, which is expected to pass easily in October. French prosecutors have wide leeway in interpreting laws and deciding whom to indict. (Joseph Schuman, Proposed Racism Ban Spotlights French Tradition of Censorship, AP, Paris, Sept. 27, 1996.)

Mr. Le Pen has scoffed at the proposed law, saying, “The more we are persecuted, the more quickly our ideas will advance.” His confidence may be justified. On September 14th, more than 3,000 National Front supporters joined the funeral of a French boy stabbed to death by an Arab in Marseilles. The 14-year-old boy, Nicolas Bourgat was attacked without provocation while he was eating a sandwich, in what Mr. Le Pen has called “a racist, anti-French crime.” Mr. Le Pen warned that unless French policies are changed, the French children of tomorrow “risk ending up like little Nicolas, by the dozens, by the hundreds.” The funeral, presided over by an archbishop, attracted city-wide support, with church bells ringing and sirens wailing in memory of the victim. (Jean-Marc Matalon, Boy’s Death Stirs French Front, AP, Marseilles, Sept. 14, 1996.)

Marching Toward Multiculturalism

A La Crosse, Wisconsin judge has shocked the community by sentencing a child-molesting immigrant to English lessons. Sia Ye Vang, a Hmong, was found guilty of fondling his step daughters, beginning in 1992, when they were 10 and 11 years old. He could have gotten 80 years in prison, but Judge Ramona Gonzalez sentenced him to 24 years of probation and 1,000 hours of community service, and ordered him to take English lessons.

Mr. Vang’s lawyer, Katherine Schnell, argued that the sentence was appropriate because the defendant was from an “agrarian culture,” in which girls are often married off very young. “In our country that happened not too long ago; young women were coupled,” she added. (Dianna Bisswurm, Immigrant’s Molestation Sentence: Learn English, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Aug. 29, 1996.)

Just What We Need

The father of Dennis Rodman, the exhibitionist black basketball player, has the entirely appropriate name of Philander Rodman. He lives in the Philippines with two wives and 15 of his 27 children. “I’m shooting for 30,” explains Mr. Rodman, who has not seen Dennis in nearly 30 years. (Newsweek, Sept. 9, 1996, p. 25.)

Psychological Needs

In July, the Association of Black Psychologists held its annual convention in Chicago. The opening ceremony included an invocation of the wisdom of African ancestors, and five hundred psychologists wore colorful African clothing to hear the president’s address, which was accompanied by African music, drumming, and dancing. The president-elect was installed with a blessing from a “council of elders,” and received a carved Ashanti stool from Ghana as a symbol of leadership. “Our mission is to liberate the African mind, empower the African Character and illuminate the African spirit,” explained outgoing association president, Thomas Parham.

The black group was founded in 1968 by blacks who found that the mainstream American Psychological Association was just not meeting their needs. (Jim Ritter, Psychologists Embrace African Customs, Chicago Sun-Times, July 29, 1996, p. 10.)

Canadian Craziness

Mohamud Salah is a 27-year-old Somali who has twice been denied refugee status in Canada. He was booted the first time in 1993 but returned two months later and applied again under a false name. This time he told a better story and was promoted to refugee but was demoted to crook when his fraud was discovered. In the meantime he developed a heart condition and was given a $75,000 heart transplant — at taxpayer expense, because he is indigent. Mr. Salah still has the option of applying to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds. (Somali Illegal Gets $75,000 Heart, Canada Immigration Hotline, Sept. 1996, p. 1.)

Good Sense is “Racist”

In the past ten years, the Hispanic — mostly Mexican — population of Waukegan, Illinois has doubled and is now a quarter of the city. Many of the newcomers are crammed five to a room the way they would live in Mexico, and Waukegan has passed an ordinance limiting the number of people who can live in a house. “Five cars in the driveway, cots in the basement, how are you going to get them out in a fire,” asks one alderman. The U.S. Department of Justice has decided that the ordinance is “racist,” and has ordered the city to back down. Waukegan is sticking to its guns, and will fight the feds in court. (Paul Driscoll, Illinois City Accused of Targeting Hispanics with Zoning Rule, The Advocate (Baton Rouge), Sept. 19, 1996, p. 7A.)

Bank Robbery on the Rise

It is now well known that banks just hand over the money when robbers ask for it. Often, the robber doesn’t even have to show a weapon. In a recent case in Detroit, a teller gave a man $5,900 when he pulled up to a drive-through window and a passed a note announcing a robbery. Neither the teller nor anyone in the bank was in the slightest danger.

Fat, unresisting targets soon become favorites. Detroit is now hit with nearly one bank robbery every other day. By the end of September there had been 123 heists, as opposed to just 94 in all of 1995. Part of the problem is that Detroit judges are giving light sentences, and criminals know it. Convicted bank robbers have been known to go free after serving as little as nine months. (Wayne Woolley, City Battles Big Increase in Bank Robberies, Detroit News, Oct. 2, 1996.)

Israel Boots Immigrants

Israel has long used West-bank Palestinians for manual labor, but occasionally shuts them out of the country for fear of terrorism. For some time, it has been thought that Palestinians could be replaced by other poor foreigners: Filipinos, Indians, Ecuadorians, Nigerians. These laborers are concentrated in Tel Aviv, where perhaps one in every seven residents is a foreigner. Unlike the Palestinians, who do their jobs and go home, the newcomers stay. As Meir Doron, a senior city official says about certain south Tel Aviv slums, “There are so many foreigners that the people who used to live there have fled. It is going to become a neighborhood without any Israelis.”

The religious political parties are outspoken about not wanting non-Jews in Israel. Avraham Ravitz, a Knesset member from the United Torah Judaism Party urges the government “not to bring people from all over who don’t belong here.” There are plans to round up and deport up to 150,000 illegal immigrants, and the Labor and Welfare Minister, Eli Yishai has proposed setting up an Authority for Foreign Workers, whose main job would be to track down illegals and send them home. (Neil MacFarquhar, Israel’s New Poor: Foreigners Replace Arab Labor but Make Many Uneasy, New York Times, Aug. 29, 1996, p. A5. Ross Dunn, Israel Prepares to Deport 100,000 Foreign Workers, Times (London), Aug. 24, 1996.)

Steps Toward Sanity

For decades, local governments have had “set-aside programs,” under which they steer contracts to companies owned by non-whites or women. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that such programs were legal only if it could be proven that they were responding to actual past discrimination. This spawned the lucrative business of hunting for past wickedness. Cities all across the country spent tax money on studies to prove they had discriminated against non-whites so they could legally discriminate against whites. Most of these studies were jokes, based on anecdote and meaningless statistics, and judges are finally saying so.

Recent rulings in Philadelphia, Miami, and Columbus, Ohio have thrown out bogus studies and banned the set-aside programs based on them. In Philadelphia, the study was so bad that not even black activists want the city to appeal the ruling. They know the investigation was nonsense, and fear that appeals court reversals will only be nails in the coffin of set-asides.

One of the common approaches to justifying discrimination against whites is to argue that non-white companies don’t get as many city contracts as their numbers would warrant. The studies almost never take into consideration the sizes, capacities, or records of different companies so their conclusions are worthless. In a ruling in September in Miami, Judge Kenneth Ryskamp scoffed at the very idea that in contracts awarded to the low bidder, statistics could be used to prove discrimination of any kind. (Paul Barrett, Courts Attack Studies Used for Set-Asides, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 26, 1996, p. B1.)

America’s Best

In September, President Bill Clinton gave 11 Americans the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he described as “the highest honor our nation can bestow on a citizen.” Included among the recipients was John H. Johnson, the publisher of Ebony magazine. According to President Clinton, Mr. Johnson gave “African Americans a voice and a face, and in his words, ‘a new sense of somebodyness.’” Rosa Parks, whose refusal to move to the back of the bus started the Montgomery bus boycott, was scheduled to get an award but did not arrive in time for the ceremony.

Others given the medal included James Brady, for his campaign in favor of gun control, and Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, whom President Clinton called “one of Catholicism’s great leaders.” (Basil Talbott, Honor for Bernardin, Chicago Sun Times, Sept. 9, 1996, p. 1.)

Better to be Black

A poll has found that one year after graduation from an Illinois public university blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to have full-time jobs. Eighty-one percent of blacks, 80 percent of Hispanics, and 77 percent of whites had jobs. Likewise, blacks and Hispanics were more likely than whites to be enrolled full-time in further education. Dave Bechtel, who heads the placement center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign attributes the difference, at least in part, to racial preference programs. (Susan Dodge, Minority Grads Find Jobs Easier, Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 9, 1996, p. 1.)

No Racism Here

Victor Morales is the Democratic nominee for the Senate from the state of Texas. He was something of a Cinderella, who rode around the state campaigning from a pickup truck, emerged from obscurity, and won the primary. Democrats are hoping for a huge turnout among Hispanics in order to put the first-ever Mexican into the U.S. Senate. Recently, he spoke of other Hispanics who, “for their own reasons seem to forget who they are.” In that group he included, quite specifically, a Republican Hispanic congressman named Henry Bonilla. Mr. Bonilla, said Mr. Morales, is a “wannabe white,” and a “coconut” who is brown on the outside and white inside. President Clinton, who calls Mr. Morales “a terrific candidate,” still intends to stump for him in Texas. (Latino Hopeful Slurs GOPer as ‘Wannabe White,’ New York Post, Sept. 27, 1996.)

Black Entrepreneur

Theresa Henderson, a black woman who lives in the Chicago area, managed to bilk welfare agencies for $355,000 by assuming five false identities and claiming a total of 27 children. She doctored birth certificates and used phony social security numbers in a fraud that began in 1988. She has no children of her own. There is no telling how long she could have worked her swindle if she had not been turned in by an anonymous tipster. (Andrew Fegelman, Woman Indicted in Welfare Scheme, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 27, 1996, Sec. 2, p. 3.)

The New South Africa

Under apartheid, Johannesburg was a pristine oasis of European civility in the heart of the dark continent. No more. Now that blacks are permitted in previously white areas, hundreds of thousands have streamed into the city. They have set up camp in parking lots and on sidewalks, hawking trinkets and spreading garbage wherever they go. Hundreds of companies have moved out of the city to the northern suburbs, where whites are fighting a rearguard action against the rising tide. Many whites now refuse to go down town. The Johannesburg Art Gallery, one of South Africa’s finest museums, has seen annual attendance drop from 150,000 to 50,000. The five-star Carlton Hotel, which was once the hub of downtown Johannesburg, has announced huge losses and has said it will close nearly 500 of its 668 rooms. Violent crime has, of course, been soaring. (Suzanne Daley, Downtown’s Denizens: Fear, and Fearless Vendors, New York Times, Aug. 21, 1996.)

All this has happened in the space of five years. South Africa is going through a speeded up version of the demographic transformation that destroyed so many American cities.

Exporting Money

There are an estimated six to seven million people living in the United States who were born in Mexico. They are thought to send four to six billion dollars back to Mexico every year. This is a huge sum for Mexico, which earns no more than $8 billion on its largest export product, oil. This flow of money is so predictable that Wall Street firms have begun to make money on it. If a Mexican bank anticipates $100 million in transfers over the next six months, it can borrow money or issue securities in New York, based on the anticipated revenue. Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Securities, and SBC Warburg have all arranged deals of this kind. (Brendan Case, Sending Dollars to Mexico is a Big, Lucrative Business, New York Times, Sept. 14, 1996.) Remittances to Mexico are, of course, lost to the American economy, a fact overlooked by most analysts of immigration.

When people analyze the economic effects of immigration, they almost never consider the huge sums of money that are simply shifted out of the country. Unlike salaries that are paid to Americans — and who then invest or spend them in the United States — money transferred out of the country is pitched right out of the U. S. economy. It provides benefits for Mexico, not the United States.

Blacks Less Likely to be Convicted

The Center for Equal Opportunity, of which Linda Chavez is president, has released a study showing that blacks are less likely than whites to be convicted when they are arrested for crimes. In an investigation of all 56,000 felony cases filed in state courts in the nation’s 75 largest cities in May, 1992, researchers found that blacks were less likely to be convicted in 12 out of 14 federally designated felony categories. Generally, the disparities were not large, in the range of three to five percent. However, on drug trafficking charges, 24 percent of blacks escaped conviction while only 14 percent of whites did. Whites got off more often than blacks in only the least serious cases — felony traffic offenses and a miscellaneous category of crimes that are against neither property nor people.

Most felony cases are settled out of court, but when one actually goes before a jury, the black acquittal rate skyrockets. Sixty-nine percent of blacks were acquitted by juries, as opposed to 29 percent for whites. Since the study focused on crime in big cities, it included those areas where juries are most likely to be composed largely of blacks. Nation-wide, the acquittal rate at trial is 17 percent, but for black defendants in the Bronx, for example, it is approximately 50 percent. (Walter Olson, Is it Really an Injustice System? N.Y. Post, Sept. 30, 1996.)

The all-cops-are-racist school will argue that the results of the study prove only that police routinely arrest blacks on insufficient evidence and the justice system wisely sets them free. The study had no way of controlling for this factor. However, police hate to see a collared man go free, and are not very likely to make “racist” arrests that will not hold up in court. Moreover, the great disparity in jury acquittal rates suggests that it is juries, not the police, who are influenced by race. Whatever the case, we can be sure that if the numbers showed that whites were being convicted less often than blacks, the press would consider this proof of racism.

‘Mind Frame of Entitlement’

In 1994, Chicago’s most famous woman, black talk show host Oprah Winfrey, announced that she would finance a program to get 100 poor families off public aid. Two years and $1.3 million later, only five families have gone through the self-help training — with indifferent success — and the program is on hold.

Even the most ardent uplift experts are scratching their heads over the results. The program was called Families for a Better Life, and was administered by Chicago’s most famous benevolence agency, the Jane Addams Hull House Association, which heavily loaded the dice in favor of success. After Miss Winfrey’s much ballyhooed announcement, 30,000 people called, asking to take part. Hull House ended up sending out 4,000 applications to people who met the criteria for participation: poor people who lived in public housing. Out of the 1,600 applications they got back, they picked six women with children and one married couple with children. These people were were thought to have the best possible chances of getting out of poverty, and were not typical welfare bums. No one had a drug or alcohol problem, and four of the seven families had a member who had completed some college. One woman was actually in college when the program started and another was in nursing school.

The eight-week training program involved intensive doses of such mumbo-jumbo as “setting directions,” “preparing for change,” and “taking risks.” All participants got spending money and, if necessary, driving lessons, help with house-cleaning, and cooking lessons. Two families dropped out.

The progress of the remaining has not been stunning. Four of the five families were on AFDC when the program started. One is still on it, and another is getting food stamps. Four of the families had an adult who had at least a part-time job when the program began. Two now work full-time, two still work part-time, and the one who started out with no job still doesn’t have one. The women who were attending college and nursing school are still in school.

Isabel Blanco, who ran the program for Hull House says that no matter how carefully the candidates were screened they still had “the mind frame of entitlement.” “We had to keep emphasizing that this is not about what you get. This is about what you do.” Even the Chicago Tribune, in a lengthy account of the program, concluded that poor people lead such disorganized lives and have been so bred to a hand-out mentality that these “defy even programs designed to overcome these obstacles.” (Louise Kiernan, Oprah’s Poverty Program Stalls, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 27, 1996, p. 1.)

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LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — I want to thank AR for publishing a large part of Fr. Thornton’s outstanding Christian traditionalist response to our current racial dilemma. Nevertheless, as with Fr. Tacelli’s equally brilliant 1994 lecture I remain disappointed by one curious omission in both talks. Neither clergyman attempted the vital and intellectually fascinating task of developing a specifically Christian ethics of race. Certainly our racial problems would be ameliorated by a return to traditional Christianity, as well as by a restoration of free enterprise, freedom of association, constitutional federalism, and traditional methods of crime control.

But even in such a fanciful American future the essential racial problem would remain. Assuming an indefinite immigration moratorium, and an even less likely convergence of birthrates, socio-culturally incompatible peoples would continue to occupy the same territory, ensuring endless tensions that always threatened to ignite much larger conflagrations.

In the course of these inevitable conflicts is it moral for a Christian to “act racially?” Given that Americans have consistently expressed opposition to the ongoing immigration inundation, must the Christian simply accept this illegitimate multiracial America? Must white Christians acquiesce in their politically instigated dispossession, or is there a theory by which we might wage righteous rebellion against the present persecutory regime — a theory of just civil war?

T. David Drumheller, San Francisco, Cal.

Sir — Congratulations on your article about “racism” in the military. I note with some astonishment that you beat the national media in reporting that the Fort Bragg soldier who painted red swastikas on the barracks doors was black. I see that the article was by an active duty military man and I hope you will continue to publish work by sources close to the news.

Thomas Abbott, Florence, Ala.

Sir — Your analysis of “The Ways of Our People” is enlightening, but your explanation of the causes of our current decline leaves much to be desired. Your attempt to let the Jews off the hook won’t work. To say that “a group that is only three percent of the U.S. population cannot denature a people all by itself,” is to argue from the false premise that influence over a culture is determined by numbers. Influence is determined by power and control over people’s lives. Jews control the Hollywood movie industry, the New York television industry, all three of the nation’s major news magazines, most of our large daily newspapers and most of our publishing houses and book distributors. The last three chairmen of the Federal Reserve have been Jews, as are 17 percent of the justices on the Supreme Court. The list of President Clinton’s appointees is top heavy with Jews. This three percent is similarly over represented in the professions, especially in the universities, and has been a major proponent of such suicidal movements as feminism, homosexuality, and leniency towards criminals.

Frank Walsh, Ringgold, La.

Sir — I think your investigation into the plight of the white man was excellent, but you still do not propose an explanation for it. It’s all very well to say that post-war wealth sapped our vitality or that the degeneration of some of our ancient altruistic traits accounts for women in combat, integrated schools, handouts for bums, and the glorification of homosexuals.

However, post-war wealth is only a matter of degree. The Victorian period represented a huge material advance over previous generations but did not unleash suicidal liberalism. Why should the wealthy 1950s and 1960s have done so? Also, although your tracing of trendy, contemporary foolishness to long-standing racial traits is clever and sometimes even persuasive, why should these traits have suddenly produced such rotten fruit after having served us faithfully for thousands of years? As you point out, up until only 50 or 60 years ago whites still had healthy racial instincts. What happened in the meantime and why did it happen so quickly?

I agree that the influence of Jews does not explain white racial capitulation. Even if every one of them were working to undermine white consciousness, why would they have suddenly become successful? Nor does Christianity explain our weakness. Whites were Christian — but vigorous — for a thousand years.

I have heard various theories that explain our decline but none is satisfactory. Some day, we will look back on the last few decades as a terrible nightmare in the history of our race but, like a nightmare, it may never have an explanation.

Jeff Cobb, Winston Salem, N.C.

Sir — I very much enjoyed Frank Borzellieri’s concise account of the travesty of justice of which Bernhard Goetz has been the victim. I have followed Mr. Goetz’ ordeal in a haphazard way, and was glad to find a clear summary of what it really means in racial terms. The most remarkable thing about the article, though, is that the author should be an elected member of a New York City school board! I am greatly cheered to know that a clear-sighted man like Mr. Borzellieri is in a position of influence.

Gloria Fischer, Ithaca, N. Y.

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