Catastrophe in Kansas City
| More news stories on Race in Schools |
|---|
Marian Evans, American Renaissance, December 1995
The effort to integrate the Kansas City public schools is one of the most costly, misguided, and ineffectual programs ever undertaken in America in the name of racial equality. This billion-dollar effort has been so utterly a failure that only good can come of it. Catastrophe as complete as this may shake even a liberal’s confidence. This may well be the high-water mark of the astonishing efforts whites have made to build a society in the name of an illusory equality.
Kansas City came to national attention ten years ago, when federal District Judge Russell Clark ordered the school district to build and staff the best, most expensive public schools in the country—perhaps in the world. They were to be so dazzlingly good that they would both lure white students out of their safe suburbs and raise black student achievement to the white level. Judge Clark was even willing to wield dictatorial power to get what he wanted, looting both the city and the state to fund the gold-plated schools that desegregation was thought to require.
Of course, the grand experiment failed. The wondrous schools were duly built but blacks learned no more in them than before. Whites stayed in the suburbs. And now a recent Supreme Court decision will probably cut off massive subsidies from the state, leaving the city with a hugely expensive system to run and no money. If Kansas City cannot dream up new ways to make whites pay for them, the dream schools will slide back into the ramshackled mediocrity from which Judge Clark thought he had lifted them.
Separate and Equal
The Kansas City, Missouri school district first opened in September 1867, with four schools for whites and one for blacks. The state constitution, like that of sixteen other states at the time, required segregation. A law passed the following year reaffirmed segregation, but required that black schools be equal to white.
Eventually the city was operating one high school and 14 elementary schools for blacks. Almost all of these schools were north of 27th Street, which was the traditional boundary of the Negro quarter. The city also made a serious effort to make the schools equal. Black teachers were paid the same salaries as white, and in most years the city spent approximately as much on black students as it did on whites. During the 1936-37 school year, for example, it cost $79.31 to educate each white elementary school pupil (about $825 in today’s money) and $69.10 to educate a black pupil. In 1940-41, however, the district spent $118.61 on each black high school student but somewhat less—$110.43—on whites.
Even if there was rough equality in the operating budget, blacks were sometimes slighted in the capital budget. Their schools were often old and overcrowded. In 1949, parents of students at the all-black Bruce elementary school sued the city to replace rickety buildings. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld a lower-court denial of relief, arguing that although the Bruce school had no auditorium, gymnasium, or cafeteria, there were white schools in the state that were no better off. Moreover, since the curriculum at the Bruce school was equivalent to that of white schools, the black parents had no grounds for complaint.
The 1950s are now acknowledged to have been the salad days for Kansas City public schools. Sixty-nine thousand students (77 percent of them white) got what was, by today’s standards, a superb education in their segregated schools. The beginning of the end was, of course, 1954.
That year, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional. Kansas City obediently prepared to desegregate. A color-blind plan was drawn up whereby students would simply attend the schools nearest them, whether they had been all-black or all-white.
Desegregation proceeded so smoothly in 1955 that the Kansas City Star did not even write a story about it. There were no disturbances because housing in the city was so segregated that only a handful of students were affected by integration. Moreover, almost 90 percent of the 921 white children who were to have attended formerly-black schools quietly moved out of their neighborhoods over the summer. When the school year began, only 117 of them were left to integrate the black schools. Their numbers dropped very quickly, and soon voluntary desegregation in Kansas City fit the pattern found all over the country: Almost the only people who crossed the color line were the children of ambitious black parents who wanted their children to attend white schools.
Whites began to drift towards the suburbs, and in 1970 the school district lost its white majority for the first time. Most schools, however, were still either overwhelmingly white or overwhelmingly black. By the mid-1970s, two-thirds of the students were black, and the district was showing all the stigmata of a black institution: crumbling buildings, poor discipline, declining test scores.
With so few white students to go around, meaningful integration was no longer possible, and by 1977, the school board was desperate. That year, it sued everyone in sight, in the hope of dragging 18 white, suburban school districts into a single, huge district. Forced busing would then flush precious white children out of the suburbs to rejuvenate Kansas City; and the suburbs would be taxed to pay for it.
Judge Russell Clark got the case but did not make important decisions until six years later. In 1984, he let the terrified suburbs off the hook. Following a 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision, he argued that since the suburban districts were not responsible for residential segregation they could not be forced into a shotgun marriage with Kansas City.
It was the next year, 1985, that he hit upon the final solution to the segregation problem: urban schools so extraordinary that bigoted whites would voluntarily abandon their suburbs and private schools to flock to the city and sit next to blacks.
Judge Clark was realistic enough to realize that these schools would have to be spectacular, and spectacular they are. Of the more than $1.4 billion that has been spent in ten years on this “desegregation” plan, $418 million has gone for renovation and new construction, though not always wisely. After a $1 million patch-up of Central High School did not raise it to Judge Clark’s standards, the old school was torn down and the district sank $32 million into a gleaming new one.
Paseo High was another school that Judge Clark pronounced unsalvageable. Built from a type of limestone found nowhere else in the country, it was a cherished architectural landmark. The judge didn’t care. Protesters watched in tears as the school was dynamited on his orders.
The district now has 12 brand new schools—scores of houses had to be bulldozed to make way for some of them—with equipment to make a teacher’s head swim: planetariums, olympic-size swimming pools with underwater observation windows, dust-free diesel mechanics rooms, at least one mock-United Nations wired for simultaneous interpretation, radio and television studios capable of real broadcasting, video editing and animation labs, a moot court complete with jury room and judges chambers, a model Greek village to teach participatory democracy, elementary schools with one personal computer for every two children, etc. etc. These are the famed “magnet schools” that were supposed to attract white children like so many iron filings.
Another $900 million has gone for special staff to operate these wonders, and across-the-board raises for teachers and administrators. There are German- and French-language elementary schools which, of course, must be staffed with native speakers. The former coach of the Soviet Olympic fencing team has been hired—along with an interpreter—to teach Missouri rubes the finer points of sword play. It has been, in short, an unprecedented orgy of spending, overseen by school superintendent, Walter Marks, who has been pleased to see the salary for his position leap from $75,000 to $140,000.
Where did the $1.4 billion come from? Judge Clark raised it through two astonishing acts of judicial dictatorship. In 1987, he unilaterally raised Kansas City property taxes, first from 2.05 percent to four percent and eventually 4.96 percent—the first time in American history that a federal judge has levied taxes. This breath-taking usurpation of power simply ignored an amendment to the Missouri constitution that requires a two-thirds supermajority vote to raise property taxes past 3.25 percent. Judge Clark even tried to impose a surcharge on income taxes, but an appeals court struck this down as an invasion of the province of the state legislature.
When it became clear that Kansas City could be bled no further, Judge Clark decided to pillage the state—but on what grounds? In a flourish of legal non-reasoning, he decided that the state had contributed to segregation in Kansas City by permitting such things as restrictive covenants in deeds and by doing nothing to mix up the races. In penance for these past crimes, the state has been forced to pay more than $800 million to make the city’s schools fit for suburban white people. Needless to say, the state attorney general has repeatedly contested this exaction, but until June (see below) had lost every court battle.
The astonishing thing is that ever since 1955 there has been no school segregation in Kansas City. By the time of Judge Clark’s decisions, no one was even pretending that the city or the state or the school district was discriminating. By no sane reading of civil rights laws can Kansas City be found guilty. It had bad public schools and two-thirds of the students were black. In the never-never land of Judge Clark’s mind, this was unacceptable. It could only be the result of racism, and not just any old racism; this was Government-perpetrated racism in violation of the United States Constitution.
Because he was springing to the defense of that holy document, he appointed himself school district dictator, with the power to eliminate everything he considered a “vestige” of discrimination. In a crowning act of folly, he decreed that he would continue to run the schools until the test scores of black children were appreciably the same as those of whites. So long as blacks did not do as well as whites, the segregation of ages past was still doing its evil work.
Complete Failure
What have been the results of this grand experiment? Instructional costs, not including costs of the building program, have more than doubled from $3,094 per pupil per year to $8,000 (during the same period, the state average rose from $2,470 to $3,760). Average classroom size has decreased from 38-47 to 22-27, and the number of school librarians has shot up from 13 to 56. Ten years ago the district had no “counselors” for elementary school students. Now it has 53 of them. All this luxury is lavished on only 36,350 students as opposed to a high of 69,000 in the 1950s. The overall operating budget has leapt in seven years from $142 million to $500 million while the number of students has stayed the same.
Whites have not behaved like iron filings. A comparison of the 1985-1986 school year—the first year of the “magnet” program—with that of 1992-93 shows that white attendance has continued to drop slightly, from 26.4 percent to 25.2 percent. Every year some 1,400 suburban students take the bus into town, but the white turnover rate is very high; most whites go back to suburbia after one or two years. The district has an annual “marketing and recruitment” budget of $1.8 million to lure other whites into town to take their places. Martin Luther King Middle School, which requires uniforms for all students and emphasizes the study of Latin grammar (!), has the best reputation among whites—and manages to attract only 55 students from the suburbs.
The small number of Kansas City whites who send their children to public schools have developed a recognizable pattern of patronizing only the lower grades. The racial performance gap is narrower at these ages and adolescence has not yet turned many blacks into predators and trouble-makers. When it is time to enter four or fifth grade, most white children go to the suburbs or to private school.
What effect has more than a billion dollars had on school performance? During the seven years of Judge Clark’s dictatorship, the dropout rate has climbed from 6.5 percent to 11.4 percent and the average daily senior high school attendance rate has dropped from 81.5 percent to 76.2 percent. The racial gap in achievement levels has remained unchanged, starting with a gap of several months in first grade and growing to two or three years by graduation. Test scores on standardized tests—essentially unchanged—are highest in the elementary grades, which have the most whites.
In short, nothing has turned out as Judge Clark hoped. It is probably true, as the district lamely argues, that even more whites would have fled the district were it not for fencing coaches and planetariums. The district is nevertheless more nonwhite than ever and the racial performance gap continues to yawn, just as it does in every school in every district in every city in every state.
In the white suburbs, in places like Raytown and Lee’s Summit, schools spend less than half the money Kansas City does on each student and get much better results. The Blue Springs district, for example, spends $3,403 per pupil compared to $8,000 per pupil in Kansas city. By the third grade, its students are already 70 to 80 points ahead of Kansas City on the Missouri standardized test (graded from 200 points to 595).
If anything, the school district faces its worst crisis ever. Superintendent Walter Marks, who happily spent hundreds of millions during his three years on the job, was fired in February. In 1994 he managed to find 14 reasons to leave town on school business. Worse still, during a paid leave of absence for back problems, he was filmed by a hidden Kansas City television crew carrying lumber into his new home in Florida. The crew also caught him bounding onto the airplane to come home, but by the time it got to Missouri he had to hobble off with a cane.
The search for a replacement has been hampered by a June decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that finally reins in Judge Clark, and may end the annual tribute from the state. In a 5-4 decision, in which the Clinton administration entered a motion in support of the status quo, the court invalidated most of Judge Clark’s efforts to fight “segregation.” Since the suburban school districts were not drawn along racial lines and cannot be blamed for “segregation” in Kansas City, Judge Clark did not have the authority to consider them as part of his solution. The actions he took to make the city schools more attractive to suburban students were therefore improper.
No one is going to make him tear down the luxury schools. However, he bypassed the collective bargaining procedure to grant raises to school employees in the hope of making the schools more attractive to suburban whites. The raises may be rolled back.
In a remarkable fit of common sense, the Supreme Court ruled that scores on standardized tests are a ridiculous measure of integration, and that the state of Missouri cannot be held financial hostage to poor black performance. After pouring over $800 million into this colossal blunder, the state may finally be off the hook.
Of course, Kansas City has become addicted to the $100 million or so every year that Judge Clark made the state hand over in operating expenses. The city is in a panic at the prospect of running the schools without state money. Once that money is gone, who is going to fix the video editing machine when it breaks down? Who is going to pay the security guards who keep the personal computers and machine shop tools from walking out the door? Who is even going to do simple maintenance on the huge, new, fancy school buildings?
To hazard a prediction, unless Kansas City can find fresh whites to bleed (see sidebar), in 10 years its public schools will be worse than ever. About the time the fencing coaches are laid off, the few remaining whites will lose their taste for the exotic and will clear out. The schools will become grimmer and more savage. As they do in Chicago, Newark, and the Bronx, exhausted teachers will maintain the barest facade of scholarship in what will come to resemble holding pens for young blacks and Hispanics. The only difference will be that in Kansas City, this familiar chaos will reign in what was once the most costly and ambitious school district in the country.
Of course, the Kansas City debacle has been a valuable experiment that has yielded fine data. Anyone but a dreamer could have predicted the results perfectly, but now they are clear enough to startle a liberal: (1) Not even the most opulent schools will tempt more than a handful of whites voluntarily to attend classes that are majority black, and (2) no amount of money can bridge the racial gap in academic performance.
Sidebar: Fueling the Folly
Thanks to Judge Clark’s tyrannical whimsies, the state of Missouri spends $350 million a year, or 6.8 percent of its entire budget, on “desegregation.” This is more than annual expenditures on prisons, courts, Highway Patrol, and state fire marshals—combined. Almost all the money goes to the majority-black school districts of Kansas City and St. Louis. Only twelve states spend any money at all on “desegregation” and none devotes as much of its budget to it as Missouri; Arkansas is next at 1.63 percent.
Because what used to be an education budget that was spread around the state now goes mostly to two cities, rural schools that serve whites are scanted. Every other school district has seen an average of $250,000 clipped from its annual budget. Parents have formed “booster clubs” to raise money for band instruments and athletic uniforms—while the big cities wallow in “desegregation” money. Needless to say, Judge Clark is one of the least popular men in the state and has used federal marshals as body guards.
When hundreds of millions of dollars drop from the sky, there are bound to be interesting runoffs. Lawyers have pocketed more than $22 million. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which always gets involved when money is to be taken from whites, has gotten $3.1 million. From 1990 to 1993, the school found ways to spend $5.6 million on employee and student travel; Southeast High recently splashed out $34,000 to send students on heritage-affirming trips to Mexico and West Africa.
Since Judge Clark couldn’t spend all his time checking up on the schools, he appointed a 13-man Desegregation Monitoring Committee with a staff of investigators. The committee, composed of a racially perfect mix of blacks, whites, and Hispanics, manages to spend half a million dollars a year. And since dream schools somehow do not produce dream students, $5.6 million has had to be spent on metal detectors and police protection.
Although mandatory busing is not part of the desegregation program, the “magnet” approach must offer ways for students to get to schools not in their neighborhoods. More than 90 percent of the students ride school buses at an annual cost of $37 million. The buses must be gold-plated, too, since the Atlanta area school district transports nearly twice as many children at a cost of $14 million a year.
Now that it looks as though the state will no longer have to hand over more than $120 million a year, the Kansas City school district is scheming for someone else’s money. There is talk of a surcharge on the state income tax or a special tax to be levied only on the region—anything to keep the monster in motion.
Kansas City increasingly covets the white suburbs. One idea would be to break up the city school district into pie-shaped wedges and attach them to the contiguous suburban districts. The old idea of a whacking great district for the entire metropolitan area has resurfaced.
The state legislature has the power to redraw school districts, but the suburbs would put up a terrific fight. They know that absorption by Kansas City would mean death. The city already spends twice as much money per student as they do—with miserable results—but wants money from the suburbs, too. “Integration” would mean busing unteachable blacks out of the education palaces in Kansas City into modest schools on the perimeter—which would then have to buy their own metal detectors. This is just the sort of horror that used to thrill liberals, but many suburbanites are now hardened refugees from urban integration who will fight for their children.
The most likely outcome is a return to the pre-Judge Clark days: bad, overwhelmingly non-white neighborhood schools in a district that will not have profited one iota from reckless, extravagant federal intervention. AR
Sidebar: What Nonwhites Think
Most blacks were delighted when the money started pouring in. The original, 1949 law suit had been about substandard facilities, and now blacks were to get the fanciest public schools in the country. The complaints have not stopped.
Today, the most legitimate is that Judge Clark’s integration goals put racial quotas on school attendance. At first, he ruled that no more than 60 percent of a magnet school’s students could be black. This goal was unreachable, and the figure has crept ever upwards, but in the meantime, since so few whites have come, blacks are turned away to keep their numbers within permitted limits.
Likewise, some black parents are simply tired of putting their children on buses, no matter how wonderful the destination. Local schools build local communities, and many blacks see the value of this.
Less legitimate is the complaint that it was all very well to build fancy buildings, but that the district should have put more effort into promoting parent participation—a factor that almost all analysts consider far more important than money. In its usual, dunderheaded way, the district was studying a plan to pay parents to attend PTA meetings when the Supreme Court spoiled the party.
Another complaint is that all the fancy programs that were supposed to reel in white students—Latin Grammar, French and German—are of no interest to nonwhites. Blacks and Hispanics have responded by giving explicitly ethnic themes to the schools where their numbers predominate. There is much irony here, because Judge Clark’s theory was that all schools should be equally attractive to all races. Inevitably, the pressure to make exceptions for nonwhites has been too great to resist.
The Chick Elementary School, for example, has kicked over the traces and gone all-black. The curriculum is larded with Swahili mumbo-jumbo: “kuumba” (creativity), “imaani” (faith), “harambee” (coming together). The children memorize poems praising Martin Luther King. There are moves to promote an Afro-centric curriculum throughout the district.
The 1,700 Hispanic students in the system are beginning to carve out empires, too. A heavily Hispanic school came up for a name change, and activists succeeded in naming it Primitivo Garcia Elementary School—despite official school board disapproval of an openly Hispanic identification. “Hey, this is in our community,” explained one Latino activist.
Race relations in the schools that are still “integrated” are poor, as they are everywhere. Black students routinely push whites around and declare areas off-limits to them. When one school tried to have a “racial harmony festival” on Martin Luther King’s birthday, black students showed their support for harmony by walking out. They were insulted that the occasion not be devoted exclusively to King.
As usual, a few clear-headed blacks have realized that a billion dollars changes nothing; the best schools are the ones that whites attend. The Hickman Mills district, just outside of town, still has a bare majority of white students, but not for long. During the 1980s, Hickman Mills lost one-third of its white school-age population while the number of nonwhite children increased 83 percent. For every black child who moved in, three white children moved out. Over and over, the process repeats itself.
(Posted on May 2, 2008)
Comments
“The (Kansas City) district now has 12 brand new schools…with equipment to make a teacher’s head swim: planetariums, olympic-size swimming pools with underwater observation windows….”
Yikes, there’s another article in today’s AmRen that says very few Africans swim. Should I take it that the pools in KC are sitting there empty and gathering dust?
Posted by Annoyed In Illinois at 6:41 PM on May 2
Does anyone know the current status of these schools? Are they open and well maintained? Or have they succumb and fallen into disrepair?
And what of the students? Is there any information on graduation rates? Longevity of teachers?
Posted by sbuffalonative at 6:47 PM on May 2
I went to a high school that was part of an experiment like this one. Looking at my freshman year book and finding a friend who graduated the same year I did and looking at her yearbook I could tell the population of whites diminished greatly. The school was one of the traditionally black high schools in our city and even after they integrated it most social functions were exclusively black. Dances played black music, all of the cheerleaders were black and all of the homecoming queens were black. There was a near riot when the first white homecoming queen was elected the year after I left. No way in hades would I send my child to a school like this, there are other ways to learn languages, fencing and diesel mechanics.
Posted by Spartan24 at 7:16 PM on May 2
They say repeating the same behavior and expecting different results is a sign of insanity. This article has an awfully high and mighty attitude. That being white and attending school is soooo much better… since it’s so much better to be white… I’m kind of curious as to why, “almost 90 percent of the 921 white children who were to have attended formerly-black schools quietly moved out of their neighborhoods over the summer”? And why when the school year began, the 117 of them left, “dropped very quickly”? Perhaps these white kids are smart enough to realize: no one really seems too interested in their well being.
Where I’m from, Ohio, they also had million dollar public relations campaigns over ‘integration’. They also practiced forced busing. And the city schools, Cleveland, Youngstown, Akron, Columbus, Toledo, also spent considerably more money per student than state average (two teachers even admitted that they keep more students on the rolls than actually attend, being the number of students affects their budget, and of course, it’s for a good cause, the inner city schools). They may have even more money per student than it would seem.
The thing is when I was in college taking school teaching (I did not graduate) they spent what seemed like days at a time teaching us that children attending city schools in Ohio were being financially shortchanged by school districts. Now, I do believe there are some white students in these city schools being shortchanged! School funding was even a big deal in the city newspapers (Legislation that proposed all schools be funded equally was debated - once again as if black students were being shortchanged).
I’d be willing to bet this same sort of ‘brainwashing’ takes place, and has been taking place all across Kansas and Missouri, right now.
As far as Kansas City schools are concerned, there’s one thing that is overlooked here. Every child who went there had at least a better physical ambiance to learn in than they would have had without all that money.
Posted by LHathaway at 8:11 PM on May 2
Interesting. Wikipedia has no entry for Judge Clark. I lived in Kansas when he was doing all this and remember numerous newspaper articles about him. Maybe someone from AmRen should make an entry for him.
Posted by at 8:29 PM on May 2
I live in KC and it’s and the schools are a joke. Raytown schools are getting worse every year as the minority population expands out even further from the central core of KC. All the KC schoolboard can accomplish is bicker amongst theimselves and fire superintendents about every two years. I fear the only thing that will help the schools here is a state takeover which is an option on the table now.
Posted by at 8:50 PM on May 2
I was in college to be a teacher and we were always told how the poor inner city students (read blacks) were being shortchanged financially by school districts. This is a total lie and fabrication, it is the rural and suburban working class whites who are being shortchanged the most. The high school I ultimately graduated from was mostly working class white. Since we were considered “priviliged” we did not get any special programs and many of our academic subjects were gradually whittled away.
Posted by Spartan24 at 8:57 PM on May 2
The folly of building expensive schools for a Black student population calls to mind that hackneyed old adage:
YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER, BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE HIM DRINK!
Does anyone (Blacks excepted) have a problem understanding the parallel in this saying?
Posted by Fed Up at 9:27 PM on May 2
Casting pearls to swine!
Posted by at 10:04 PM on May 2
Judge Clark is a racist. Anyone who thinks that black students need to be around Whites to learn obviously believes them to be inferior. There’s no other explanation. I’m 40 years old and I’m grateful I didn’t have to grow up in this country in these times.
Posted by at 10:06 PM on May 2
I would love this country to go back to segragation not only in the schools but the colleges as well….if only we could go back to the 50’s again…and get rid of anyone who ever thought of de-segragation….oh if only we could do it!!
Posted by lydia at 11:45 PM on May 2
10:06 PM: Actually, that was the official reasooning in Brown vs Board of education (no joke): Blacks are traumatized by the company of undesirables (i.e. their own) and cannot therefore achieve. (for undesirability they used the doll experiment: Both black and white kids prefer white dolls. Duh.)
And they wonder why their ideas are not working.
Posted by nokangaroos at 4:32 AM on May 3
Typical liberal insanity, a liberal federal judge, liberal politicans, liberal educators, liberalism is insanity, it does not work, it is proven wrong every time and the K.C. school debacle is a prime example.
Posted by abc at 6:29 AM on May 3
Would have been cheaper and better for everyone for the judge to have just bought out all of the seats at all of the region’s private schools and given the local blacks free tuition and transportation to these schools. The students might have learned more, and they might not, but there would not be any expensive, empty schools to now massively subsidize.
Posted by Lost in Paradise at 6:35 AM on May 3
Lydia: We could do it, but would you be willing to pay the price? People say that want change, but I wonder if they could stomach the carnage it would require to get to where they say they want to be.
Posted by Xenophon at 11:33 AM on May 3
Lydia, I, too, would love to return to the 1950s American society, and through to the mid-1960s, as those years were the last great years of this nation. It was when America was still America; schools worked, music was nice, streets and neighborhoods were safe and genteel, and standards across the board were high.
How far down we have been dragged. I want our culture back and from the results in Europe, I’m feeling the first twinges of optimism. I pray it is genuine.
Posted by at 12:46 PM on May 3
At least Clark did not require whites to move back into the city. Maybe that will be next.
Posted by Frank at 1:47 PM on May 3
This judge raised taxes? That’s illegal. Judges can’t levy taxes.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 4:09 PM on May 3
“And they wonder why their ideas are not working.”
Since nihilist destruction (Of the White West) is their goal, their ideas are working brilliantly…
Posted by at 7:49 PM on May 3
.
If whites don’t visit you or try to involve themselves in your activities, culture or educational facilities, please take the hint. Stay away from us. Avoid our sphere of influence unless invited and don’t bother us.
Advancing into the future and building a space-faring civilization is hard enough without being forever hindered by retro-pessimism and racist bickering.
.
Posted by MICHAEL DEAN MILLER at 12:53 AM on May 4
It seems that somehow in the system of checks and balances the judiciary has gotten the last say, and has effectively become legislators, with legislative power superior to that of the constitutionally designated legislators.
Posted by H. Dumpty at 5:00 AM on May 4
Xenophon,
It doesn’t matter what people can or can’t stomach. What is coming isn’t going to be any choices in the matter. It’s going to be do or die. No in between. There will be the White people who will fight and those who will go to their deaths like sheep.
The die has been cast long ago.
Tom Iron…
Posted by Tom Iron... at 8:50 AM on May 4
Why is it wrong to discriminate, unless of course it’s done by the left? or by those with darker skin.
Why is it the epitome of evil for their to be a virtually all-white country club somewhere, while we must speak no evil of and actually Celebrate the opposite - non-white segregation: black history month, the association of black journalists, NAACP, even black schools and teams?
The majority of schools that practiced forced busing never had segregation in the first place. Only a social worker proclaiming, on average whites and blacks live in different neighborhoods (blacks had neighborhoods of their own while whites had ‘neighborhoods’ in various degrees of mixture) and that apparently allowing black kids to beat up white kids in the here and now would prevent them from wanting to kill them later.
It is non-whites from every region of the globe, who form their own ethnic neighborhoods everywhere in American and keep them that way by showing real-intolerance. It is non-whites who are paid and encouraged to segregate in every way, as a form of rewarding ‘enlightenment’.
I do think that if AmRener’s think really hard we can for once come up with a busing plan the left disapproves of. We shouldn’t let that stop us. Not in a good cause.
Posted by Sometimes, it's good to be white at 12:01 PM on May 4
As long as the only permissable explanation for chronic black failure is white racism (as opposed to black incapacity), we’ll continue to squander billions in increasingly hare-brained schemes designed, ultimately, to conceal the obvious and put off the day of reckoning for future whites and Asians to deal with.
After all, we’ve now been doing this for nearly fifty years, and in anything, the myth of white racism being the explanation for black lack of achievement is perhaps stronger than ever before, and punishment for contradicting the lie is now more instantaneous and severe than ever.
Posted by john at 3:27 PM on May 4
This judge raised taxes? That’s illegal. Judges can’t levy taxes.
Anything done by a judge is legal, since there is no one but the selfsame judge to rule on its legality. As H.L. Mencken said, “A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.”
Judges in the U.S. have the type of absolute power that could corrupt an angel.
Posted by qwerty at 5:17 PM on May 4
“As long as the only permissible explanation for chronic black failure is white racism (as opposed to black incapacity)”
I feel I must respond to this. I can be a pretty cantankerous sort, so let me be that way for a moment. Why must it be either one thing or the other? Either White racism or Black ‘incapacity’?
One, or the other? That’s some narrow thinking there, and I might add, a way of thinking, and focusing our attention, in either case, that only helps further the interests of non-whites at the expense of what’s best for whites. One could say turning whites into non-persons.
It may seem hard to believe, I know, but many a fool has underestimated his enemy, regretting it later. I wouldn’t want to ever see that happen to you.
Posted by LHathaway at 7:17 PM on May 4
This judicial tax-increase could and should have been calleged in a higher court as unconstitutional. Legislative bodies have the legal authority to raise taxes; judges do not.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 1:41 AM on May 5
Intergration was forced because, well, because it would HAVE to be forced. They were segregated for a reason. The unconscious, or conscious, impulse behind this was to ruin the country. Though the cause doesn’t seem to matter much at this point since the result was the same either way. Or, maybe it was just an experiment, as if they said to themselves “Hey, let’s try this on our little lab rats (meaning us) and if it works, maybe we’ll try it too. But not a moment before.” Which would explain why not one of the Power Elite who forced Intergration participated in it themselves. And this is a fact they are perfectly indifferent to. The conclusion I’ve come to after witnessing this sickening sight for fourty years is that they are simply out of their minds. They really don’t know what they are doing, and they don’t care.
Posted by Mal Evans at 2:39 AM on May 5
“Another complaint is that all the fancy programs that were supposed to reel in white students—Latin Grammar, French and German—are of no interest to nonwhites. Blacks and Hispanics have responded by giving explicitly ethnic themes to the schools where their numbers predominate.”
ie; Stupid Feel-Good courses in place of legitimate learning.
“There is much irony here, because Judge Clark’s theory was that all schools should be equally attractive to all races. Inevitably, the pressure to make exceptions for nonwhites has been too great to resist.”
This ones the clincher. Before we all go shaking our heads we should remind ourselves of our part in it. I wish I could remember the article, but a while back I recall reading a post from “Dedalus” who said that Western Civilization went from deteriorating WITHIN it’s principle Race (Whites, From Higher Man to Mass Man) and is now deteriorating BY Race, from White, to Black and apparently, though he didn’t say this I am, hitting the bottom of the barrel with Mexicans.
Great article, but ultimately, I have to say, it’s not surprising. For me, to read this article and act surprised is to be either incurably naive or insincere. Fact is, Americans haven’t cared about Higher Learning since Andrew Jackson was President.
Posted by Salty Dog at 3:15 AM on May 5
Lydia, I, too, would love to return to the 1950s American society, and through to the mid-1960s, as those years were the last great years of this nation. It was when America was still America; schools worked, music was nice, streets and neighborhoods were safe and genteel, and standards across the board were high.
How far down we have been dragged. I want our culture back and from the results in Europe, I’m feeling the first twinges of optimism. I pray it is genuine.
Posted by at 12:46 PM on May 3
This is a huge - HUGE - part of the problem. Neitzsche once said that, though Socialists and Communists were charlatans and buffoons, and Businessmen were bloodsuckers. He thought Conservatives are like Crabs, ie; they’re constantly moving backwards.
I think History has proven that man right, time and time again. After the messiness of the French Revolution is was fashionable among Conservatives to long for the good old days of the Middle Ages. But that was a Myth, just like you guys are mythologizing about the 1950’s. Did it ever occur to you that the fact that most people in America were as Conservative as they were made them too conformits, to rigid, and therefore to inflexible to adapt to the changes, of any kind? Meaning in this case, they were defenseless against what the other side was doing to them. In short, Conservatives are mal-adaptive.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the other side. But that’s what they are! The OTHER side! As in, two sides of the same coin. And it’s the COIN that has to go, but no one knows what to do. So we keep going back and forth between Left and Right, but the Left has clearly won. The Right today would have been the far Left yesterday. In such cases, when both sides can’t move on, quality trumps quality. That’s why the Left is bringing in people from all over the world, and putting a shiney, feel-good gloss of Multi-Culturalism over it. But the key emphasis is on the quantity of people. They don’t give a damn about quality, as a glance at the country today makes perfectly obvious.
Posted by at 9:30 AM on May 5
Lydia: We could do it, but would you be willing to pay the price? People say that want change, but I wonder if they could stomach the carnage it would require to get to where they say they want to be. Xenophon
As long as people feel they have something to lose, they will not be willing to pay the price. It takes desperate times for desperate action. I can’t see any real change until we are close to an economic or environmental collapse. Most white people are too comfortable and contented to seriously challenge the system.
Posted by Sardonicus at 2:41 PM on May 5
“Lydia, I, too, would love to return to the 1950s American society, and through to the mid-1960s, as those years were the last great years of this nation. It was when America was still America; schools worked, music was nice, streets and neighborhoods were safe and genteel, and standards across the board were high.”
I am sixty-two. I was born in Santa Monica, and grew up in the Palos Verdes Peninsula. I remember. Yes, it was great- all white, everywhere you go (almost). But the skids had long been greased. John Dewey had already ruined education for generations. The book Why Johnny Can’t Read was published in 1955. Bayonets were in use in Little Rock. The Beat Generation paved the way for the hippies.
Conservatives were done in by Fabian Socialism. Socialism won, DUE TO ITZ CLAIM OF MORAL SUPERIORITY. The truth was leaked by one of the, ahem, usual suspects: “We will feed you small doses of socialism until you fall into our hands like an overripe fruit.” That fruit is now going SPLAT! right in front of our very eyes.
Posted by uncle screwge, w/o money bin at 9:01 PM on May 5
“…the Left is bringing in people from all over the world,…They don’t give a damn about quality, ..” (Posted by at 9:30 AM on May 5)
To the left, non-white skin IS quality.
Posted by H. Dumpty at 1:29 AM on May 6
I would not want to return to the 1950s. It had all the good qualities listed above by a poster, but It was also a time of stifling rigidity and inhibition. Certainly there must be some middle ground, or alternate ground, between the rigidity of the 1950s and the insane libertinism of today.
I was a teenager in the 1950s, and one of the hardest things for a teenage boy in many areas in the country then was to find any sort of sexual release. And whatever else you may think of Wilhelm Reich, he was correct in referring to that as a form of “agony.”
Also, as a child in the 1940s, I felt I was going to literally suffocate in all the cigarette smoke. That also was a torture, for me. Thank god that particular insanity has been much reduced—at least today parents generally don’t think to smoke in their cars with their child with them and the windows rolled up to boot.
Pre-1960s America was no Golden Era, and the freedom that came with the 1960s was not TOTALLY bad.
But remove the ubiquity of cigarettes, and allow at least well-regulated prostitution, and I’ll take the 1950s over today BY FAR.
I’m certain all amren readers will agree with me on all the above points. Let the fun begin!
Posted by H. Dumpty at 1:57 AM on May 6
The 50’s were already a deeply decayed culture. Surely no
one thinks what happened sprang from nothing? Their plans were
very well laid and almost complete by the 50’s. The higher levels
of the Academy were already almost completely infiltrated. The
next level down, proffesors and college presidents, were already
on board as useful idiots. Extended families were breaking down,
drugs spreading in the middle class, farms being foreclosed,
people being herded to the cities and “good” jobs. Advertising
was becoming a force for evil. Mass media was almost gone-bought
up by a few billionaires. Rock and Roll was promulgated and began
its work of simultaneously softening up and coarsening the young.
Everything only appeared to be OK, just like the Titanic
appeared to be ok after it hit the iceberg. But it couldn’t last
and hey, it didn’t.
Posted by Freyr at 2:06 AM on May 6
“This is a huge - HUGE - part of the problem. Neitzsche once said that, though Socialists and Communists were charlatans and buffoons, and Businessmen were bloodsuckers. He thought Conservatives are like Crabs, ie; they’re constantly moving backwards.
I think History has proven that man right, time and time again. After the messiness of the French Revolution is was fashionable among Conservatives to long for the good old days of the Middle Ages. But that was a Myth, just like you guys are mythologizing about the 1950’s. Did it ever occur to you that the fact that most people in America were as Conservative as they were made them too conformits, to rigid, and therefore to inflexible to adapt to the changes, of any kind? Meaning in this case, they were defenseless against what the other side was doing to them. In short, Conservatives are mal-adaptive.”
Posted by at 9:30 AM on May 5
This is quite possibly the best post I’ve ever read here. You are ABSOLUTELY correct about the tendency to ‘romanticize’ the past in the face of change. Too often this just happens because people are too lazy (or as you say, maladaptive) and unimaginative to create an even better world for their posterity.
Sure, in certain ways the 1950’s was definitely a good era for White America, but this was of course largely superficial. If things had been truly healthy, then White America would have had the energy and the spiritual resources to combat the degenerative forces of multiculturalism/egalitarianism that soon came to dominate them completely. In the end, people were so ‘conservative’ that they forgot to take an active, creative role in preserving their way of life. Change is integral to life, but the direction that this change proceeds in is always subject to the creative intervention of human beings. If people in the 1950’s had truly valued their way of life then they should’ve CREATIVELY defended it instead of just ‘oppose change’ altogether.
This is probably the main reason that I have never considered myself a ‘conservative’ in any sense. Honestly, what is there left to conserve? Besides that, all-too often conservatives mistake the non-existence of change as being synonymous with preserving their way of life. That’s just not correct. It is possible to adapt creatively to changes and still maintain your critical sense of identity and basic mode of life. Look at Japan, for instance, as I know many Amreners have a tendency to do. If you respond actively and decisively to changing circumstances, you can harmonize your sense of identity with the sort of adjustments that must be made in other areas of life. It is often difficult, but all things come with a cost.
I’ve mentioned this fact on here before, but it never hurts to reiterate such a crucial point: As far as our race is concerned, history will be headed steeply downwards for quite awhile, but this needn’t spell the end of Western man altogether. Remember, even though all of the older institutions that characterized Western civilization may fall in the near future, as long as we keep ourselves racially intact, there is no reason why we can’t CREATE newer and better institutions for ourselves later on. The death of one civilization just means the birth of another, and those that will have a hand in determining the shape and structure of this new civilization are the ones who face the unknown with CREATIVITY, not backward looking nostalgia.
Posted by Historama at 3:19 AM on May 6
“…the Left is bringing in people from all over the world,…They don’t give a damn about quality, ..” (Posted by 9:30 AM)
“To the left, non-white skin IS quality.”
Posted by H. Dumpty
…………………………………..
In the left’s determined obsession with eradicating “racism”, they utterly fail to see that the only thing they are eradicating is their own race.
Posted by ghw at 6:09 PM on May 6
This judicial tax-increase could and should have been calleged in a higher court as unconstitutional.
Expecting a judge to rule against one of his fellow judges is like expecting a venomous snake to bite itself to death for your convenience and security.
IIRC, a higher judge did modify the order a little, but the tax increase stayed in place.
Posted by qwerty at 6:47 PM on May 6
“Remember, even though all of the older institutions that characterized Western civilization may fall in the near future, as long as we keep ourselves racially intact, there is no reason why we can’t CREATE newer and better institutions for ourselves later on.” (Posted by Historama at 3:19 AM on May 6)
Thanks for your excellent post.
Regarding the excerpt above, I’d like to add the clarification (which I’m hoping you’d agree with, but I don’t know for sure) that we don’t want to start over from scratch; we need to retain our knowledge of the principles and forms of our old institutions, and make changes to them with great care. I think it was Edmund Burke that called that “giving a vote to the ancestors.”
I’m conservative enough to believe that one can never know all the factors that are making things function even as well as they do at any point, and so changes need to be made somewhat cautiously for fear of inadvertently changing things that are unseen but important.
Especially, I’d like us not to make the mistake the far left has made and devalue the freedoms in the Bill of Rights. At least after all the dust settles, I hope that the U.S. will still have the most freedom of speech of any country in the world, which I believe is still the case now (we certainly have more freedom of speech than Canada, and more than Europe with its incarcerations of many persons for questioning accepted versions of historical “truths”).
Posted by H. Dumpty at 8:55 PM on May 6
“Thanks for your excellent post.
Regarding the excerpt above, I’d like to add the clarification (which I’m hoping you’d agree with, but I don’t know for sure) that we don’t want to start over from scratch; we need to retain our knowledge of the principles and forms of our old institutions, and make changes to them with great care. I think it was Edmund Burke that called that “giving a vote to the ancestors.”
I’m conservative enough to believe that one can never know all the factors that are making things function even as well as they do at any point, and so changes need to be made somewhat cautiously for fear of inadvertently changing things that are unseen but important.
Especially, I’d like us not to make the mistake the far left has made and devalue the freedoms in the Bill of Rights. At least after all the dust settles, I hope that the U.S. will still have the most freedom of speech of any country in the world, which I believe is still the case now (we certainly have more freedom of speech than Canada, and more than Europe with its incarcerations of many persons for questioning accepted versions of historical “truths”).”
Posted by H. Dumpty at 8:55 PM on May 6
I’ll make a few separate points in response to your post.
With regard to the idea of ‘starting over from scratch’, I myself was referring to the fact that the unprecedented demographic shifts that are taking place right now will UNDOUBTEDLY mean the breakdown of the basic systems in place in the US that have hitherto gave us a sense of stability and order.
THINK ABOUT IT: If back in the 1950’s/1960’s White America was unable to stop the tide of cultural degeneracy, ‘political correctness’ and Marxist egalitarianism, what chance do we have today? Back then, the odds were MUCH better for White America, and yet we still lost one battle after another, be it cultural, moral, or legal (i.e. segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, etc.). The so-called ‘conservatives’ at that time were the clear majority, and yet they failed at every step. The main reason that they failed is because the conservatives were essentially REACTIVE, while the opposition was active and energetic on the the whole. This is why I’ve never self-identified as a conservative, because of this tendency towards REACTION rather than active participation. History has shown fairly well that those who only react to changing circumstances are almost invariably the LOSERS.
Today, the VAST majority of White America fundamentally supports all of the major moral and legal changes that took place during that era. Anyone who thinks that the White America of TODAY will be able to ‘conserve’ anything worthwhile is simply living with their head stuck in the sand. Hence, my point is that, when ‘the dust settles’, as you phrase it, the United States along with our entire civilization will look COMPLETELY different.
For one thing, the ‘United States’ itself will simply cease to exist as it will be unable to assimilate the disparate populations that it has so foolishly accepted in recent decades. Formerly, the US was able to maintain a basically stable society without assimilating the various visible minority groups because they were small enough to be ignored. Now, they are no longer ‘small minorities’, they are RAPIDLY growing groups who clearly cannot be ‘assimilated’ in any sense, and who ALSO cannot be ignored any longer. The situation is made incredibly worse given the fact that these groups generally have animosity towards the White community due to the historical record of White success and White exclusiveness. So, I’ll let you tell me, what in the WORLD will be ‘conserved’ in the midst of this tragedy?
Sure, many of the older FORMS that worked for us in the past can still be saved because we can remember their usefulness and rebuild them wherever we end up, but the SUBSTANCE will undeniably be lost in the demographic disaster that will overtake the US. I’m not saying that I look forward to this, I’m just saying that this is clearly INEVITABLE. Even then, as I tried to point out before, this needn’t be the death blow for our race, it will just be an enormous period of readjustment and reorganization. I love Freedom of Speech and the Bill of Rights too, but what makes you think that these things will remain intact when non-Whites come to possess an even greater political voice than they do today? What will prevent them from demanding that their collective feelings be protected from the ‘racist’ criticisms of the White community, who at that time won’t even have the nerve enough to insist that they be treated on equal footing with the increasingly pampered and privileged non-White classes.
Keep in mind, I’m NOT saying that ‘All Is Lost’ for our race, I’m just saying our civilization in its present arrangement will not survive the transformations that are taking place in our era. But again, all of this should not even be a cause for the slightest despair or grief. Our civilization is merely an expression of our own biological (i.e. racial) potential, and even if it suffers major decline right now, we will have the capability of building something even better in the future. Furthermore, it’s important to keep in mind that what’s going on today is in no way an accident, or something that is altogether out of place in a larger historical sense. NOTHING in history is accidental or without explanation. When something like this happens, it just means that it HAD to happen for some reason or another. The White community has clearly lost its nerve, and it is unable to impose its dominant culture on the hungry outsiders any longer. I seriously doubt that even if we still HAD our nerve we would be capable of successfully dealing with the unprecedented demographic situation that has developed in our time. Hopefully, what this will REALLY mean is that only the best and most worthy of our people will have the moral courage to carry on our civilization in the long-run.
Posted by Historama at 5:27 PM on May 7
I realized my post would not address your main points, which are excellent ones, and now elaborated with wonderful clarity in your second post.
Of your several points that I especially liked, one was, “I seriously doubt that even if we still HAD our nerve we would be capable of successfully dealing with the unprecedented demographic situation that has developed in our time.”
That is wonderfully realistic, and certainly should bring myself and any reader down to earth.
And I had not seen that, re conservatives’ response to the changes that came upon us starting in the 1950’s, “The main reason that they failed is because the conservatives were essentially REACTIVE, while the opposition was active and energetic on the the whole.”
You expressed this in your first post as, “In the end, people were so ‘conservative’ that they forgot to take an active, creative role in preserving their way of life.”
A very important point. Duke has often said that it was the killing of several young black girls, in the bombing of the black church in Birmingham, that completely demoralized and effectively ended what had been a fairly substantial white resistance to the race changes that were then being forced upon the South. But, the fact that Southern white resistance folded that easily shows the truth of your comment, I think. A strong movement doesn’t fold because of the inevitable atrocity.
But I’m less at ease with what may be some implications of your following statements:
“Sure, many of the older FORMS that worked for us in the past can still be saved because we can remember their usefulness and rebuild them wherever we end up, but the SUBSTANCE will undeniably be lost in the demographic disaster that will overtake the US.”
“Our civilization is merely an expression of our own biological (i.e. racial) potential,..” and “as long as we keep ourselves racially intact, there is no reason why we can’t CREATE newer and better institutions for ourselves later on.”
I lack your apparent confidence that the culture our race has laboriously built up over so many centuries may be replaced with something even better. I think it MAY be, but it also may NOT be. I suspect that there is a lot of chance involved in history and in the cultural forms that a race’s history produces.
I think you are correct that the substance of our culture will likely be swept away, and is being swept away, but I’m hoping that it’s most important substantive features will be remembered and preserved in white minds, as whites struggle toward the day they may re-establish a white culture. I think those cultural features are more likely to be preserved if whites recognize their importance, rather than glorying too much in our racial nature and our ability to create anew.
Of course whatever we end up with will be very different from what came before, but I hope that freedom of speech will not have ceased to be understood, and that whites will have kept mathematics alive (my own favorite among the Western cultural achievements, outside of personal freedom).
Posted by H. Dumpty at 3:43 AM on May 8
NOTHING in history is accidental or without explanation.
Posted by Historama at 5:27 PM on May 7
With all respect Historama, you couldn’t be more mistaken. Although there are clear patterns to History, it is essentially one accident after another. Historical documents are an attempt to make sense out of it AFTER the fact. That is why the act of writing History requires rigorous honesty; and THAT is why we are in serious trouble. Because the writing of History is being handed over to a people with a Gangster mentality.
“The Slave Revolt in Morality” as Nietzsche refered to it, has been victorious; and this amounts to a world wide epidemic of corruption; intellectual, moral, financial, etc. This is something no one has “planned”.
For me, Whites blew it by misapplying the notion of free speech. Actually, they didn’t even really use it. Freedom of Speech has only ONE real value - Spiritual Growth. It is the ONLY thing that seperates us from the animal. We never really understood the gift we gave ourselves in the form of Free Speech. So we’re losing it. And with it, the chance to grow along Spiritual lines. In fact, one symptom of this is the fact that we spend so much time talking about Race relations and virtually none at all talking about the far more important issues surrounding the collapse of the Family. We are in for a very long, and dreary, decadence like nothing ever experienced before. The only way out is through; which means people must force themselves to look at the nature of the problem. The unwillingness to grow spiritually; and to even know that it is a value; the consequences are immense.
The lower you go on the Spiritual ladder the more dependence on the four sanctions of Ecomonic Deprivation, Imprisonment, Torture and Death.
The higher you go the more you experience the inversions of those sanctions, Economic Ease, The priviledges of Freedom, Respect for the Individual, and love of life and of others.
The people who control things today are simply not at all interested in the inversions of the four sanctions, obviously.
By the way - “Posted by at 9:30 AM on May 5” That was me.
Posted by Dedalus at 12:15 PM on May 8
“With all respect Historama, you couldn’t be more mistaken. Although there are clear patterns to History, it is essentially one accident after another. Historical documents are an attempt to make sense out of it AFTER the fact. That is why the act of writing History requires rigorous honesty; and THAT is why we are in serious trouble. “
……………………………………..
Humpty has provoked some interesting thoughts. I think Dedalus and Nietsche are right on the mark here. With much regret (because I wish it weren’t so), I must agree with them. We (humanity) just fumble and bumble along in the darkness, stumbling in our ignorance from one calamity to another. History is nothing more than a series of catastrophies with occasionally something going right. When taught honestly, history is not a pretty story. Is the chronicle of mankind’s greed, arrogance, hatred, vanity, cruelty. Luckily, it is not all bad. It chronicles our accomplishments and progress too, which have come about inspite of all the obstacles and often with much suffering entailed. But in truth, we don’t really know what we’re doing or where we are going. Very often, things don’t turn out at all as they were intended.
The Greeks likened the human condition to walking backwards into the future: we see what lies behind us — though we frequently misinterpret it (and that is another story) — but we cannot see what lies ahead.
Posted by ghw at 1:10 AM on May 9
“With all respect Historama, you couldn’t be more mistaken. Although there are clear patterns to History, it is essentially one accident after another. Historical documents are an attempt to make sense out of it AFTER the fact. That is why the act of writing History requires rigorous honesty; and THAT is why we are in serious trouble. Because the writing of History is being handed over to a people with a Gangster mentality.”
Posted by Dedalus at 12:15 PM on May 8
Hmmm.. I think we are talking about two differt things. I didn’t necessarily mean that the larger historical process is un-accidental, I was more referring to the behavior of individuals in history itelf. Put another way: in history, things happen because people WANT them to happen. Our understanding of their reasoning and motivations is definitely difficult to determine sometimes, and I would never try to claim that I have those issues all figured out. I think you are right that the historical process is in many ways unpredictable, and the direction it seems to go really has no ‘rational explanation’ in the bigger picture. But, whether it is accidental/unpredictable or not, it clearly moves as it does because certain people are getting some sort of tangible benefit. Look behind every single historical event, and you will find winners and losers.
More specifically, in the context in which I brought up the original point, I was addressing the fact that the West as we know it will almost certainly succumb to the massive cultural and demographic disasters that have came about in our age. And, my point served to illustrate the fact that this development itself is not without reason or explanation. Occasionally, people look at the massive transformation of the West and are left with a complete blank expression on their face. They truly cannot see any real reason why things have developed this way, and so they wrongly assume that it must be inexplicable. This is especially true on most pro-White or pro-Western websites I’ve visited.
The truth is, however, that there are legitimate historical reasons for why the West is falling apart, just as there are reasons for why other civilizations in the past have fallen as well. Look at ancient Rome, as just one example. By the time they were finally overcome by other native European ‘barbarians’, they had already essentially been conquered from WITHIN. They had been spiritually corrupted by too much wealth, ease, and comfort. They had been too far removed from the harshness of nature for such a long period of time, and they lost touch with the sort of priorities that every healthy people maintain — i.e. family life, rigorous physical and mental training of the young, healthy cultural values, etc. What chance does a thoroughly deracinated people like this have in the harsh struggle for life against other tribes who still DO value these things?
Similarly, White America finds itself in this situation today. As mentioned, wealth, ease, and comfort — In excess, these are the WORST possible things for a people, as they invariably create confusion over the proper priorities of life. Not only that, they make people ‘soft’ and unwilling to endure pain for the sake of long-term survival and gain. This is what we see today, with your average White individual (particularly males) not possessing enough internal moral courage to even SPEAK HIS NAME. And THIS explains why our civilation will come crashing down, at least in its present form. And, with it, our arrogance and misguided priorities will come crashing down as well. THIS is why it’s no accident, just as it was no accident that the Romans needed to be humbled by the barbarians who didn’t care about their wealth and arrogance. And, I say this while being as unabashedly pro-White/pro-Western as can possibly be. But, it doesn’t prevent me from recognizing the harsh realities of life altogether. Hopefully, the ‘going under’ of the West will mean that the very finest of our race will take it upon them to carry on the future, while the deracinated, egotistical, anti-social elements will be left behind…
Posted by Historama at 1:21 AM on May 9
“I didn’t necessarily mean that the larger historical process is un-accidental, I was more referring to the behavior of individuals in history itself..things happen because people WANT them to happen…I think you are right that the historical process is in many ways unpredictable…”
An example of this dual nature of history, i.e. its purposefulness and its accidental quality at the same time, is seen in the civil rights movement in this country, and in that movement’s results.
The persons behind that movement possibly had the motivations described by Prof. Kevin MacDonald. It’s indisputable that those persons did in fact cause that movement to happen—the movement did not “just happen.” And, the motivations MacDonald believes those persons had have certainly been fulfilled by that movement—white society has lost a lot of whatever cohesion it formerly had, and currently can pose little threat to the larger group from whom the managers of the civil rights movement came.
But, I don’t believe that very many of those people, if any, intended that that movement, with its removal of all restrictions upon blacks, would result in the horrible criminality that the movement has unleashed upon our society. That criminality is an unintended consequence of the civil rights movement—an accident of history.
It’s just an example of the common fact that actions are purposeful, but that many of the consequences of actions are unforeseen.
Posted by H. Dumpty at 10:16 PM on May 9
“in history, things happen because people WANT them to happen. it moves as it does because certain people are getting some sort of tangible benefit. Look behind every historical event, and you will find winners and losers.
Occasionally, people look at the massive transformation of the West and are left with a completey blank expression on their faces. They cannot see any reason why things have developed this way, and so they wrongly assume that it must be inexplicable. What chance does such a thoroughly deracinated people as this have in the harsh struggle for life against other tribes which DO still value these things? This is especially true on most pro-White or pro-Western websites I’ve visited. “
Historama
Might it be that they understand the underlying problems but are not allowed to express any such understanding on those websites that you’ve visited?
Posted by at 4:59 PM on May 10