Rod Dreher's Blog, page 129

Uncle Ted’s Social Network

Anybody who knows much of anything about the US Catholic Church and the abuse scandal knows that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was at the center of much of it. But until now, to my knowledge, no one has mapped his web of influence within the Catholic hierarchy. Well, here is something truly useful for the cause of understanding the Catholic sex abuse crisis, and understanding how the Church might be reformed: an academic paper using social science to identify the networks of influence throughout the Catholic hierarchy.

Its author is the prominent UK Catholic social scientist Stephen Bullivant, working with Australian postdoc researcher Giovanni Radhitio Putra Sadewo. Here’s the abstract:

Social Network Analysis (SNA) has shed powerful light on cultures where the influence of patronage, preferment, and reciprocal obligations are traditionally important. We argue here that episcopal appointments, culture, and governance within the Catholic Church are ideal topics for SNA interrogation. This paper presents preliminary findings, using original network data for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. These show how a network-informed approach may help with the urgent task of understanding the ecclesiastical cultures in which sexual abuse occurs, and/or is enabled, ignored, and covered up. Particular reference is made to Theodore McCarrick, the former DC Archbishop recently “dismissed from the clerical state”. Commentators naturally use terms like “protégé”, “clique”, “network”, and “kingmaker” when discussing both the McCarrick affair and church politics more generally: precisely such folk-descriptions of social and political life that SNA is designed to quantify and explain.

In other words, these social scientists have created a map of how kingmakers within the Catholic hierarchy reproduce and extend their influence. What they have not done here, and it may not be possible to do, is to correlate the sexual identities of these prominent hierarchs with their influence. That is, they’ve created a map of what you might uncharitably call a “mafia” — but not necessarily the infamous “lavender mafia.”

Non-Catholics should know that within the Catholic Church, bishops play a key role in making other bishops. Only the Pope can name bishops, but he almost always chooses from among a short list of names submitted to him by the apostolic nuncio (Vatican ambassador) in a country. Those names have come to the nuncio from local archbishops. The Catholic hierarchical system reproduces itself from within. There’s nothing sinister in principle about this at all.

But as Bullivant & Sadewo observe, this system is unavoidably an old boys network, and ripe for exploitation and abuse:

Whatever the theological justifications for, and desirability of, these features, from the perspective of SNA one might plausibly hypothesize a number of potentially negative properties emerging from this situation. For example, these might include the potential for ambitious clergy (or seminarians) to actively seek the favour and patronage of their own (and/or other influential) bishops, or indeed for bishops to use the hope – or even promise – of preferment as a means of incentivizing or rewarding loyalty. It could result in certain “types” (in terms of personality, class, ethnic background, theological vision, etc.) of priests being favoured and/or formed, in line with the type of their own bishop, and perhaps of a wider episcopal “mould” or “culture”. This homophilizing tendency would then be intensified by the fact that “how to be a bishop” is learned, in very great measure, through a process of imitation and socialization. It might lead to the creation of identifiable “factions” or “cliques” of bishops, bound by mutual bonds of preferment and favour, who act – formally or informally – in concert, and who each support and promote each other’s protégés.

Furthermore, given all this, it might feasibly create shared senses of solidarity among particular groups of bishops, such that if “one falls, we all do”. To give a hypothetical example: suppose that the bishops in a given province had all served as vicars general, chancellors, and/or auxiliary bishops for each other, and had in turn (even absent direct or formal collusion; cf. Bourdieu, [1984] 1988:84-9 on similar dynamics at work within academic appointments) returned the favour by supporting the promotion of each other’s chancery favourites. Should one of the senior bishops in this group then be rumoured to have committed crimes while in office, it is not hard to imagine how others in the network might seek a “quiet” solution to the problem, to prevent either themselves or their patrons becoming implicated, even if by association, to varying degrees.

The paper quotes Bishop Robert Barron, an auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles, talking about how the hierarchical network protected its own. Bishop Barron said:

[I]t seems numerous bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, both in this country and in the Vatican, knew all about McCarrick’s outrageous behavior and did nothing in response to it; or, rather worse, they continued to advance him up the ecclesiastical ladder, from auxiliary bishop, to bishop of a diocese, to archbishop, and finally to cardinal. Even after he resigned from his post in Washington, DC, […] McCarrick continued to be a roving ambassador for the Church and a kingmaker in the American hierarchy – again, while everyone knew about his disturbing and abusive tendencies.

The paper includes charts showing the connections among key bishops and others, as well as a map indicating the personal connections between McCarrick and other bishops. The paper’s authors are careful to say that one should not assume guilt by association. It would be unfair to conclude that just because a bishop had close social ties to McCarrick that that same bishop knew about McCarrick’s dirty deeds, or covered them up.

Nevertheless, say the authors, you would have to be very naive to dismiss the role networks of silence played in concealing this terrible corruption:

A more-or-less standard pattern emerged: credible allegations against an abusive priest being kept quiet, with assurances made to the victims and their families; the priest in question being quietly reassigned, perhaps after a period of ‘successful’ counselling at one of a small group of Church-run treatment centres specializing in precisely this, or sent to another diocese with a glowing letter of recommendation; no thought whatsoever being given to this new set of young people being put into very serious harm’s way; and this process being repeated, multiple times, for years if not decades.

Bullivant and Sadewo theorize that nobody sat down and promulgated a strategy for covering up scandal, but rather these strategies emerged organically from within these closed networks, and were passed down through the system. They also talk about “very serious conflicts of interest” among bishops who owe their place in the hierarchy to older, more powerful bishops who godfathered their appointments. This, they say, is exactly what happened in the McCarrick case. The good thing about the system is that it allows for bishops to select other bishops whom they know have the qualities it takes to be a bishop. The bad thing is that it indebts younger bishops to older ones, incentivizing them to turn a blind eye to corruption.

Read the whole thing. The paper does not hold social network analysis up as a cure-all for the crisis of reform within the hierarchy, but simply points out how it is a helpful tool for those tasked with trying to make the system work better. The authors suggest other related areas of scholarly inquiry. One thing they don’t mention — something I did bring up above — is the role of sexual relationships and identity, and their roles in the episcopal process. I’m not simply talking about powerful bishops who advance sexual partners. I’m talking about men like three powerful archbishops I know of — all now deceased — who to my knowledge were not sexually active later in life, but who almost certainly did have gay sex lives as young priests. In their cases, it’s not that they promoted sexual partners, but that their pasts made them blackmailable.

The late scholar Richard Sipe knew very well how this worked. I don’t know who controls his archives, and what kind of access scholars have to it. But I would be willing to bet there is some interesting social network analysis to be done from his data.

Reading the paper, two thoughts occurred to me about the difficulty of reforming the system. I am thinking now of two sitting bishops — one the ordinary of a small diocese, the other the ordinary of a major archdiocese. I won’t say their names so I can speak frankly. Informed readers can easily guess the names of these two men, whom I’ll call Archbishop A and Bishop B. If you comment on this post, do not hazard a guess as to their identities. I will not publish those posts, simply because I don’t want to facilitate a guessing game. The point is not their identities, but the problems their cases represent.

Neither bishop emerged from their diocese’s local or regional episcopal culture. The Vatican sent them in from outside the network. When both arrived, they walked into a situation in which they were strangers, and their predecessors had established deep administrative cultures. They could not possibly have known much about their new assignments, and understandably had to rely on a local network of monsignors and church officers to guide them.

Both Archbishop A and Bishop B had to depend on help from well-entrenched bureaucrats who knew where the bodies were buried, so to speak, and who sought to acculturate the new ordinaries into the way of life in that diocese. In Archbishop A’s case, his new right-hand man was a very practiced and skillful gay priest of long experience in that archdiocese, and who was known to local church insiders as a key player in clerical gay culture. Monsignor X was the kind of man who knew everything about everybody. It took years, but his reputation finally caught up with Monsignor X, who was eased out. When Archbishop A took over that archdiocese, I knew that nothing there would ever change as long as Monsignor X stayed at the top of archdiocesan governance.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Archbishop A really did want to do the right thing — that he came to town with a clean personal record, and wanted to run a clean ship. Given the size of that archdiocese, and the intricacies of its networks and sub-networks, Archbishop A would have to depend on those who understood it, at least at first. It’s easy to imagine how he would eventually come to see things from the point of view of Monsignor X, who no doubt told him that things were the way they were there because they couldn’t have been otherwise.

Similarly, in the case of Bishop B, he had to depend on local monsignori to help him understand his new diocese. Years later, it emerged that Bishop B learned of homosexual activity among some clergy, and some instances of abuse. Bishop B did not act as he ought to have done when confronted by the evidence. Now it’s just a guess, but I don’t believe that Bishop B was compromised at all in his personal behavior. But I do believe it likely that Bishop B did what most of us would have done in his situation: assumed that the leadership team put in place by his predecessor was credible and trustworthy.

In fact, from what I have gathered, they had their own secrets to keep, and networks to protect. What I don’t know, and can’t plausibly speculate on, is the extent to which Bishop B “went native” — that is, came to adopt the insider views of the men on whom he depended as his guides to life in that diocese.

Again, let us assume that both Archbishop A and Bishop B arrived at their new assignments with clean personal records, and professing admirable ideals. But the realities of governing required them to rely on experienced local people who may have led them astray. Had they arrived with their own administrative team, think of how long it would have taken the newcomers to come to understand how the diocese works — and how entrenched sub-networks of bad actors could have taken advantage of their lack of experience and local knowledge.

It is hard to imagine the changes in administrative policy that could prevent this sort of thing from happening. The cliche is true: personnel is policy. In my life, the Catholic priests I have known who have been the kind of devout, morally strong men one would hope to have as bishops have almost always been priests who openly say that being a bishop is the last thing they would ever want.

It is vital to reform the church bureaucracy to make abuses of power that led to the sex abuse scandal less likely to occur. This new paper by Bullivant & Sadewo is a valuable contribution to that ongoing effort. But let’s be honest: it is impossible to come up with a plan of government, in a church or in any other organization, that does away with the need for men to be good.

As I was preparing to post this, and looking for a photo of Ted McCarrick to illustrate it, I discovered that Elizabeth Bruenig at The New York Times has just this afternoon published a piece about members of a single family targeted by the lecherous cardinal. Excerpts:

It was hard for Francis to describe what happened when it was his turn to sleep in Mr. McCarrick’s bed, which he estimated happened a dozen or more times, starting when he was 12 and trailing into his early adulthood. Francis looked down and spoke quietly when he said that Mr. McCarrick would usually offer to scratch his back and that he would sometimes press his body against Francis and slip his hands under the boy’s shirt or slide his fingers underneath the waistband of Francis’ underwear. While Mr. McCarrick was touching him, Francis said, he would murmur little entreaties: “You have to pray for your poor uncle,” Francis recalled his saying, as though it were Francis’ responsibility to reconcile the priest to God, even as he lay helpless and confused against him.

More:

None of Francis’ four adult children describe themselves as practicing Catholics, in large part because of their father’s experience with Mr. McCarrick and the sex abuse crisis. Francis had been open — though not necessarily explicit — with them about Mr. McCarrick’s behavior; he never wanted to foster the climate of oppressive secrecy that had shrouded his childhood.

“Christianity is supposed to be about loving your fellow people and doing good and believing there’s good,” Francis’ older daughter told me. “None of that rings true in any of this.”

That network of bishops and clergy who knew all about (or enough about) what Uncle Ted was doing, but said nothing — they are complicit in this ruin. The social science paper lays it out in abstract detail; Elizabeth Bruenig’s story puts flesh and blood, heart and soul, onto the structure. Bullivant & Sadewo provide the map; Bruenig explores part of the territory. It is a harsh and pitiless land, let me tell you.

The post Uncle Ted’s Social Network appeared first on The American Conservative.

Woke America Is Pre-Revolutionary Russia

You’re used to me saying it, but now read this stunning essay by writer Peter Savodnik, writing in Tablet magazine, says that Woke America is like living in a 19th century Russian novel. Savodnik begins by recalling a semester in 2012 spent at Middlebury College, teaching Russian literature, and reflecting on what drew him there that year. More:

But there was something else, less obvious and more frightening, and that has become clearer, more haunting, in the eight years since: The metaphysical gap between mid-19th-century Russia and early-21st-century America is narrowing. The parallels between them then and us now, political and social but mostly characterological, are becoming sharper, more unavoidable.

We can reassure ourselves by repeating obvious truths: The United States is not czarist Russia. The present is not the past. History does not repeat itself. But those facts are not immutable laws so much as observations, and even though they are built on solid foundations, those foundations are not impervious to shifting sands. We can go backward. We can descend into a primal state we thought we had escaped forever. That is the lesson of the 20th century.

The similarities between past and present are legion: The coarsening of the culture, our economic woes, our political logjams, the opportunism and fecklessness of our so-called elites, the corruption of our institutions, the ease with which we talk about “revolution” (as in Bernie Sanders’ romanticization of “political revolution”), the anger, the polarization, the anti-Semitism.

But the most important thing is the new characters, who are not that dissimilar to the old ones.

More:

Consider Yevgeny Bazarov. To Bazarov, one of the sons in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, the whole of Russia is rotten, and anyone who can’t see that is an idiot or a knave, and the only solution is to raze everything. There is a logic to his thinking. Russia was ruled by a backward-looking monarchy. The nobility was complicit in perpetuating grotesque inequality. The Orthodox Church was allied with the ruling classes. And the ruling classes moved glacially to liberalize. (In Western Europe, the feudal system started to collapse nearly four centuries before it did in Russia.)

One can imagine arriving at the conclusion that Russia would never reform itself, that the only way to liberate it from its medievalism was to start over. Bazarov, a doctor whose empirical nature, we are led to understand, informs his nihilism, is convinced that Russia must start over, and everything about him—his sarcasm, his lack of empathy—is meant to convey disdain, destruction, a sweeping away of the old. He is openly disrespectful of the fathers in the novel—Nikolai Petrovich and Vasily Ivanovich—because they’re old. They’re fathers. They come before, so they are necessarily less developed. To Bazarov, those who do not see the world exactly as he does—most people—are simply roadblocks or enemies. They are not really people. They are not wholly human.

One wonders if Bazarov is that different from today’s protesters and statue-topplers, the 20-somethings sowing discord in our newsrooms, the cancellers, the uber-woke, the sociopaths who police our social media feeds, those who would massage or rewrite history in the service of a glorious future. Like Bazarov, they are incapable of empathizing with those who do not view the world the way they do. Like Bazarov, they assume that the place they come from (America) is cancerous to the core—regressive, hateful, an affront to right-thinking people everywhere. Like Bazarov, there is about them a crude sarcasm (or snark). Like Bazarov, there is a logic to their outrage: Today, we are witnessing Americans revolting against the vestiges of a barbaric, racial hierarchy that was constructed four centuries ago. That hierarchy continues to be felt. It is not unreasonable to wonder, When will we finally transcend the past?

Savodnik goes through other characters from 19th century Russian novels. It’s uncanny, the parallels between then and now. I won’t quote much more from this essay, because it’s so very rich that I want you to read every line. He goes on:

We know how this turned out, and for those who have forgotten, or for those who are too young or ignorant to know, we should remind them over and over: Those who questioned the revolution, objected to any of its ends or means, thought there might be something worth preserving, were deemed hostile combatants or hapless chumps whose false consciousness inhibited progress. In the end, they were all airbrushed. In the end, the way one escaped this airbrushing was to signal, with a great and inauthentic virtue, that one was not a hostile combatant by spotlighting the real enemies of progress. Whether these enemies were real or “real” was immaterial. Only idiots worried about the truth. There was no truth. What was most important was to keep one’s head down and, if need be, accuse wantonly. Accuse! Accuse! Accuse! Or as Americans like to say, the best defense is a good offense. Everyone knew this would never lead to the place they had been promised it would lead to, but what else was there to do? As the violence ratcheted up, it was necessary to signal with ever greater ferocity, to name more names, to out more wrong-thinkers, until all that was left was the pathetic, bloodless corpse of a country dislodged from itself.

This is us, y’all. This is where we are. This is who we are. But to my knowledge, we don’t have any Dostoevskys or Turgenevs to prophesy in art. Or do we? Who am I missing.

Read it all. I cannot emphasize strongly enough how much you need to read this.

Of course this dovetails perfectly with my forthcoming book Live Not By Lies. I feel sheepish promoting the book here, but I wrote the book because I desperately want people, especially Christian people, to prepare themselves spiritually and communally for the catastrophe likely to befall us. We don’t have forever. If it were up to me, I would do what I could to make the book available tomorrow. But publishing moves slowly, and it won’t be out till September 29. You can pre-order it, though, and have it in your mailbox or on your Kindle the day it’s released.

Here are excerpts from my book that echo Savodnik’s essay. Note that Savodnik says, as I do in my book, that race and identity politics have taken the place for 21st century Americans the role that Marxism played for 19th century Russians:

Younger Russians [of the 19th century] also keenly felt the shame of their liberal fathers’ failures to change the system. In the midst of Russia’s decline, Marxism appealed to restless young intellectuals who were sick of the old order, had lost faith in reforming it, and who were desperate to tear the system down and replace it with something entirely different.

Marxism stood for the future. Marxism stood for progress. The gospel of Marxism lit a fire in the minds of prerevolutionary Russian radicals. Their priests and the prophets were their intellectuals, who were “religious about being secular.” Writes historian Yuri Slezkine: “A conversion to socialism was a conversion to the intelligentsia, to a fusion of millenarian faith and lifelong learning.”

Far-left radicalism was initially spread among the intellectuals primarily through reading groups. Once you adopted the Marxist faith, everything else in life became illuminated. The intellectuals went into the world to preach this pseudo-religion to the workers. These missionaries, says Slezkine, made what religious believers would call prophetic revelations, and by appealing to hatred in their listeners’ hearts, called them to conversion.

Once they had captured Russia’s universities, the radicals took their gospel to the factories. Few of the workers were capable of understanding Marxist doctrine, but the missionaries taught it to those capable of translating the essentials into a form that ordinary people could grasp.

You saw recently that Oprah Winfrey signed an agreement to create entertainment content based on The New York Times‘s propagandistic 1619 Project? This is that. 

More from Live Not By Lies:

The post-World War I generation of writers and artists were marked by their embrace and celebration of anti-cultural philosophies and acts as a way of demonstrating contempt for established hierarchies, institutions, and ways of thinking. Arendt said of some writers who glorified the will to power, “They read not Darwin but the Marquis de Sade.”

Her point was that these authors did not avail themselves of respectable intellectual theories to justify their transgressiveness. They immersed themselves in what is basest in human nature and regarded doing so as acts of liberation. Arendt’s judgment of the postwar elites who recklessly thumbed their noses at respectability could easily apply to those of our own day who shove aside liberal principles like fair play, race neutrality, free speech, and free association as obstacles to equality. Arendt wrote:

The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price, the destruction of civilization, for the fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced their way into it.

Regarding transgressive sexuality as a social good was not an innovation of the sexual revolution. Like the contemporary West, late imperial Russia was also awash in what historian James Billington called “a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier Russian culture.” Among the social and intellectual elite, sexual adventurism, celebrations of perversion, and all manner of sensuality was common. And not just among the elites: the laboring masses, alone in the city, with no church to bind their consciences with guilt, or village gossips to shame them, found comfort in sex.

The end of official censorship after the 1905 uprising opened the floodgates to erotic literature, which found renewal in sexual passion. “The sensualism of the age was in a very intimate sense demonic,” Billington writes, detailing how the figure of Satan became a Romantic hero for artists and musicians. They admired the diabolic willingness to stop at nothing to satisfy one’s desires and to exercise one’s will.

One more clip:

One of contemporary progressivism’s commonly used phrases—the personal is political—captures the totalitarian spirit, which seeks to infuse all aspects of life with political consciousness. Indeed, the Left pushes its ideology ever deeper into the personal realm, leaving fewer and fewer areas of daily life uncontested. This, warned Arendt, is a sign that a society is ripening for totalitarianism, because that is what totalitarianism essentially is: the politicization of everything.

Infusing every aspect of life with ideology was a standard aspect of Soviet totalitarianism. Early in the Stalin era, N. V. Krylenko, a Soviet commissar (political officer), steamrolled over chess players who wanted to keep politics out of the game.

“We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess,” he said. “We must condemn once and for all the formula ‘chess for the sake of chess,’ like the formula ‘art for art’s sake.’ We must organize shockbrigades of chess-players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess.”

The other day, I wrote about a teacher’s call in Philadelphia to make “antiracism” into “the overarching theme” of all public education in that city’s schools. This same mentality — infusing ideology into all aspects of life — is what has overtaken The New York Times and other newspapers. You might recall the Times‘s town hall meeting last summer, in which an unnamed staffer confronted executive editor Dean Baquet:

Staffer: Hello, I have another question about racism. I’m wondering to what extent you think that the fact of racism and white supremacy being sort of the foundation of this country should play into our reporting. Just because it feels to me like it should be a starting point, you know? Like these conversations about what is racist, what isn’t racist. I just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting. And so, to me, it’s less about the individual instances of racism, and sort of how we’re thinking about racism and white supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country. And I think particularly as we are launching a 1619 Project, I feel like that’s going to open us up to even more criticism from people who are like, “OK, well you’re saying this, and you’re producing this big project about this. But are you guys actually considering this in your daily reporting?”

Baquet did not have the courage to stand up for traditional journalistic standards here. And we have seen since then that the newspaper has become even more aggressively and monotonously centered around race, from a progressive point of view. We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of journalism, Baquet might have said. We must organize shockbrigades of journalists, and begin immediate realization of an antiracist plan for journalism.

If you want to read the whole thing, pre-order Live Not By Lies. It is essential reading both to understand the meaning of this moment, and to prepare resistance. Of course I don’t know how this is going to end. In his piece, Savodnik talks about the nihilistic white-nationalist right as a part of the current picture. Personally, I expect that as the left-wing cultural revolution proceeds, we will see violent reaction from young white men who feel nothing but rage, and like they have nothing to lose. My guess is that after a period of violence, the left-wing establishment will impose peace with force of arms, and use the power of already existing surveillance technology (e.g., the means and methods of surveillance capitalism) to control and suppress dissent. This is the world that Live Not By Lies is trying to prepare us for.

Don’t dare allow yourself to believe that it can’t happen here. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vaclav Havel, Silvester Krcmery, and Hannah Arendt all said that that is the lie that people living in modern Western liberal democracies tell themselves to avoid having to face reality, and act to fight evil while there is time. One more clip from Live Not By Lies, about how Russians of the late imperial era did not see what was coming until it was too late:

In retrospect, this seems almost unbelievable. How could the Russians have been so blind? It was, in a sense, a problem of the imagination. Reflecting on the speed with which utopian dreams turned into a grisly nightmare, Solzhenitsyn observed:

If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings, that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the “secret brand”); that a man’s genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov’s plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums.

It wasn’t just the tsarists who didn’t see it coming but also the country’s leading liberal minds. It was simply beyond their ability to conceive.

It can happen here, and it will happen here, unless we wake up and act decisively. Acting decisively also means making preparations, like Father Tomislav Kolakovic and his followers in pre-communist Slovakia, for how the church will survive under the coming totalitarianism. But we will talk about that in depth once Live Not By Lies has been published. Something to get straight in your head now: do not listen to people who tell you everything is going to be okay, that this is something passing, and everything will get back to normal soon enough. It’s a dangerous delusion.

 

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Smithsonian’s Anti-White Propaganda

Look at this stunning exhibition from the website of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. This is from its web page about the menace of “Whiteness”. Aside from the anti-white stereotypes here, notice the inadvertently anti-black insanity: things like hard work, being on time, cause and effect, “rational thinking,” respect for authority, politeness — all these things, according to the museum, are manifestations of “whiteness.” Did David Duke write this stuff? It’s crazy! If a white man said that black people are lazy, can’t keep to a schedule, have no respect for authority, can’t think straight, are rude, etc. — he would be rightly criticized as racist.

But there it is, at the taxpayer-funded National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Why? Why do we pay for this racist propaganda? The museum itself looks fantastic, but this is disgusting.

The museum teaches black people that being on time for work is racist oppression. Don’t believe me? Look. What kind of country do the museum curators want?

UPDATE: I can’t get over this. If you assume that everything these curators say below is true, then you can explain a great deal of the chronic problems within black America. What kind of neighborhood would you expect to have if most of the people in it devalued hard work, rejected the idea that they needed to be on time, refused to defer gratification, did not respect authority, sought out conflict, laughed at politeness, rejected the traditional family model, and so forth? You’d have communities that were beset by crime and generational poverty, without the cultural tools to overcome the chaos. There are plenty of white people in this country who live by similar rules — and they’re chronically poor too.

UPDATE.2: The black writer Thomas Chatterton Williams is really upset by this garbage. He writes in part:

UPDATE.3: The Smithsonian is defending itself from criticism, and wants you to settle down and be “holistic” about its racism:

 

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Bari Weiss, Hero

I spent the late morning and early afternoon sitting out in the gruesome weather (heat index in Baton Rouge today: 109 degrees) having iced coffee with a reader of this blog. He’s a gay man who is a political progressive, and a practicing Christian. I had a great time. We talked about God, family, art, and politics. At one point he talked about the problems he had with cancel culture, and how the more moderate people are being shouted down by the militants. I could have stayed longer, but I needed to get home to cook lunch for the kids, and besides, the heat was punishing. We made plans to do this again. It was fun to be reminded that Twitter, and the Internet, is not real life.

When I got home, I saw that Bari Weiss has quit The New York Times, and boy, did she go out with a bang! You can read her entire resignation letter here. If you don’t know anything about her, she’s a Millennial op-ed writer and editor at the Times — or was, until today. She describes herself as a “left-leaning centrist.” From a Vanity Fair profile last year:

Though most of her friends are liberals, she sometimes socializes with conservatives too. According to friends, she loves to spar not just to hear the sound of her own voice but because she might learn something. After listening to someone else’s point of view, she’s been known to do something amazing—change her mind. Given the current climate, in which everyone seems to be retreating to angry and angrier corners, those who meet her find this expansiveness refreshing.

More:

Broadly speaking, Weiss’s work is heterodox, defying easy us/them, left/right categorization. Since getting hired at the paper in the spring of 2017, she has focused on hot-button cultural topics, such as #MeToo, the Women’s March, and campus activism, approaching each topic with a confrontational skepticism that until recently had a strong place within the liberal discourse. Her basic gist: while such movements are well-intentioned, their excesses of zeal, often imposed by the hard left, can backfire.

She can’t stand Donald Trump. More:

If she wanted to, Weiss could criticize him in every one of her articles. But, she asks, “is our job to be a warm bath and an ideological safe space for people who we think are our readers? Or is it our job to show them the scope of opinions, legitimate opinions, that people all over this country have? I think that’s our job. But there are other people out there who apparently think the job of a newspaper is almost to be socialist realist art.”

So that’s Bari Weiss. She’s the kind of person that any rational newspaper editor would want to have on their op-ed staff. Agree with her or not on particular issues, her kind of curiosity and eclecticism is what brings life to a newspaper’s pages.

Weiss has been under intense attack from within the Times for the past few weeks. Finally, she couldn’t take it. You can get the details in her resignation letter to A.G. Sulzberger, the Times publisher. Excerpts:

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

More:

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

Tell me about it! It’s why I quit subscribing to the Times. It has gone from being a liberal, but generally reliable paper — something worth having, and subscribing to — to having become the Pravda of progressive elites. Weiss is dead right. More:

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

I hope she sues the hell out of them, just as I hope that professors who are treated to this kind of abuse by their colleagues inside academia sue college presidents. More:

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

She’s right about that. The Times has become such a boring newspaper, because you know what it’s going to say about everything, and you know that it’s going to say it with moralistic fervor. Weiss gives specific examples of the Times‘s left-wing batshittery. More:

Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry.

Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.

All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

Read it all. You should. Every journalism student should study this carefully. This is big.

The New York Times is always an industry leader, but I bet there are people like Bari Weiss at The Washington Post, National Public Radio, the TV networks, and other mainstream media outlets who could tell a similar story. Back in the 1980s, when I was in college, I chose journalism over an academic career path because I enjoyed the thrill of what journalism could do. As I told my new friend today over coffee, I became really passionate about journalism after discovering the journalistic works of Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote early in my career, and through them, came to see what journalism could be. American journalism has always been a liberal profession; it goes with the territory. But over the course of my career, which began in 1989, I have watched it also become a profession that has more in common with a political party or an established religion than with the gathering, reporting, and analysis of the news.

Bari Weiss is describing the tip of a wedge that is moving through the entire profession, as it is doing and has done through academia. The kind of conversation I had today over coffee with my new gay progressive friend — about our religion, our politics, our differences, and so forth — is not one I would have in a newsroom today, for fear it would be weaponized against me. And believe me, I would a thousand times rather have that kind of conversation than one with someone who agreed with me 100 percent, but who was too afraid or incurious to think about the world outside the narrow confines of ideology and religious orthodoxy. My interlocutor and I were up front about our differences, but we approached each other as people who respected each other, and maybe could learn something from each other. He works in the arts, where the yoke of ideology is as deadly to creativity and truth-telling as it is in journalism.

The good news is that Bari Weiss ended her letter by saying that she’s confident there are Americans who want what the Times used to be:

For [dissident] young writers and editors, there is one consolation. As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day. “An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It’s an American ideal,” you said a few years ago. I couldn’t agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.

Amen to that! I would throw subscription money at such a paper if somebody would start it. (And if I were Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, I would throw millions at them to start such an enterprise.) I see that Andrew Sullivan announced today his departure from New York magazine, where the same police-state mentality among the progressive staff handcuffed him. He said he’ll explain more in his farewell piece on Friday.

Anyway, I’m standing and cheering for Bari Weiss, who had one of the best jobs in American journalism, but who realized holding on to it was not worth sacrificing her dignity to that pack of scoundrels, and who grasped that like the weak chiefs of colleges and other institutions of American life today, Sulzberger did not have the courage to lead his own staff away from the brink. The Times has become a left-wing hate-sheet — and let me tell you, reader, if you don’t grasp how influential that newspaper is on reflecting and managing the opinions of American elites, you are dangerously out of touch. You might not care what the Times thinks about anything, but what is published in its pages, and what is not allowed to be published, matters in a way that is hard to overstate. The main direction of any society is set by its elites. The overwhelming majority of Americans will never read a word in the Times. But those who do read it, and take their cues from it, are the people who run this country.

I hope history proves that Bari Weiss’s declaration of independence was the day that the ideological hegemony of the illiberal American media suffered a fatal blow. Watch whatever she does next. Bari Weiss will never win the Pulitzer Prize, but a single one of her is worth a thousand of those raging propagandists who are driving a once-great newspaper, and a profession, into the ground.

The post Bari Weiss, Hero appeared first on The American Conservative.

Gazing Upon The Basilisk

I’d like to take a break from the culture war for a post. You’re welcome.

As regular readers know, I’ve been lately into watching the films of the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (d. 1986). They aren’t for everybody. They are heavy and complex, but I find them beautiful and challenging. One of Tarkovsky’s consistent themes is the spiritual decay of the modern world. To prepare to watch Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, I read the 1972 Soviet sci-fi novel on which it is based, Roadside Picnic. The novel is significantly different from the film version — far less abstract. I enjoyed them both, but found the novel to be more challenging in terms of the things it made me think about.

I’ll give you a brief summary of the novel, or at least the part that interests me the most. The book is set in the future, after an extraterrestrial visitation of Earth. The aliens came and went without people seeing them or making contact. The six “zones” they left behind appeared in a pattern that is meaningful, though nobody really knows what they mean. Here’s how Wikipedia frames it:

The novel is set in a post-visitation world where there are now six zones known on Earth that are full of unexplained phenomena and where strange happenings have briefly occurred, assumed to have been visitations by aliens, Governments and the UN, fearful of unforeseen consequences, try to keep tight control over them to prevent leakage of artifacts from the Zones. A subculture of stalkers, scavengers who go into the zones to steal the artifacts for profit, has evolved around the zones. The novel is set in and around a specific zone in Harmont, a fictitious town in a fictitious country (loosely resembling Canada), and follows the protagonist over the course of eight years.

All humanity knows is that it has been visited by a superior intelligence. It doesn’t really know what the artifacts they’ve left behind mean, though the government is trying to figure out how to exploit them for its own purposes. There is somewhere in the Zone in the novel a Golden Sphere said to have the power to give those who enter it the thing they.most desire. The thing is, it really does give you what you most desire, not what you say you desire.

One of the novel’s themes is the inability of humanity both to understand the meaning of the visitation, and to handle the technology the aliens left behind. The title of the book comes from a character speculating that maybe their is no higher meaning to the visitation, that the aliens treated earth like a “roadside picnic,” where they left their trash behind after stopping off to rest on their way somewhere else. Maybe, says the character, we view them as forest animals view us when they come across our trash from our picnics.

The novel is not a Christian work by any means, but reading it, I kept thinking about the Christian teaching of the Incarnation: that God became Man, and dwelled among us. This was a visitation. Nobody fully understood it when it was happening (that is, when Christ was on earth), and the Gospel of Luke relates an episode after Christ’s resurrection when two men curious about Jesus met him on the road to Emmaus, and didn’t recognize him. We certainly have far more insight now into the meaning of the “visitation” by God to earth than the people in the novel did about the aliens’ visitation. But still, we don’t know what to do with the “technology” Jesus left behind. Since his ascension into heaven, people have used his teachings for all manner of things, good and bad.

This comparison only goes so far. From a Christian standpoint, Jesus didn’t come primarily to give us information, so that we could add to the sum total of humanity’s knowledge. He came to defeat death, and to establish a bridge between finite, sinful, time-bound, broken humanity, and the infinite, perfect, eternal God. He doesn’t want us to know things, in the same way that we would know a book of philosophy, but to know him in the way we would know a person. The Word was made flesh. He came to visit us with a purpose in mind, unlike the aliens of Roadside Picnic (who may or may not have had a purpose, and if they did, the world still doesn’t know what it was). Still, there are parallels to the set-up in Roadside Picnic, one of which is that while nobody saw the aliens, everybody lives in the aftermath of their visitation and what it revealed. The entire town of Harmont is built around its relationship to the Zone. It is hard to be indifferent to it. You can’t not know that the aliens came.

Back in 2003, David Bentley Hart wrote a much-discussed First Things essay, titled “Christ And Nothing,” in which he made a similar point. You have to read the whole thing to grasp his argument, but he basically says that the triumph of Christianity was so thorough among the peoples of what we call “the West” that it annihilated any escape to the past. The visitation of the God-man, you might say, was so overwhelming in its consequences that life before the visitation is inaccessible. For the West, then, if it will not have Christianity, it must take nihilism. He writes:

Which is why I repeat that our age is not one in danger of reverting to paganism (would that we were so fortunate). If we turn from Christ today, we turn only towards the god of absolute will, and embrace him under either his most monstrous or his most vapid aspect. A somewhat more ennobling retreat to the old gods is not possible for us; we can find no shelter there, nor can we sink away gently into those old illusions and tragic consolations that Christ has exposed as falsehoods. To love or be nourished by the gods, we would have to fear them; but the ruin of their glory is so complete that they have been reduced—like everything else—to commodities.

It’s a powerful essay.

All of this is a lead-up to an extraordinary short story I read recently: “The Basilisk,” by the English writer Paul Kingsnorth. It’s not so much a story, really, as it is the exchange of letters between two fictional characters — an uncle, Richard, and his niece, Bridget. It’s about the apocalyptic spiritual meaning of Internet technology — and it’s haunting. I can’t stop thinking about it. Here are some excerpts. It begins like this:

I would not normally write to you in this way. I would not normally write to anyone in this way. I gave up writing letters some years ago after my correspondents mostly stopped replying. When one of my friends sent me a two-line text message in response to a five-page, handwritten letter—to add insult to injury, it even had one of those smiley face things at the end—I knew the game was up. I am not convinced that people know how to write letters anymore, or even to read them. I won’t bore you with the facts about the ongoing measurable decline in our ability to concentrate. You of all people know what the screens are doing to our minds.

That, as you might already have guessed, is the subject of this letter.

It will be a long letter, but I beg you to bear with it. Do not skim it: sit down and read it carefully. You may know why I am writing, but you do not know what I am going to say, and this is why you must—you must, Bridget—read this letter right through to the end, and you must make the effort to take it seriously, however hard it may seem for you at times. When it gets hard, if it begins to seem ridiculous—well, I will ask you to indulge me. Indulge your old uncle. I have known you since you were in nappies. I have watched you proudly from afar. I never had children, as you know, nor wanted them, but I have been glad that we have remained—can I say friends? I hope so. As I hope, dearly, that our friendship will survive these words.

He’s a historian and a college professor, and he’s writing to warn her of what the smartphone is doing to her mind, and to the minds of everyone. More:

Of course, all of this affects their brains. I see it in my students daily. Twenty years ago, my undergraduates had no problems reading and writing long texts. Now, they can’t absorb ideas.

This is measurable, too. For instance, in one study it was found that children who use screens for more than two hours a day achieved lower scores on thinking and language tests than those who did not. They can’t even escape at night. Did you know that people go to bed with their phones under their pillows? With radioactive waves pounding through their skulls all night long? The blue light pouring from the screens all day disrupts their circadian rhythms, so people are not sleeping anyway. If they can’t sleep, they can’t dream. They are stuck in an endless present, a terrible ongoing now.

I read the preceding paragraphs back to myself now and I can see how they will come across to you. Another old man complaining about the internet, in the same way his parents used to complain about the television. Actually, your gran and grandad watched more television than I did; the telly, as they called it, was a perpetual background hum. I used to hide in my room and read war comics. But in any case, I am not alone here, Bridget. Even the people suffering from this malady—and it is a malady—know they are ill.

And:

We know what this is, Bridget, of course we do. We have a word for it: addiction. Tobacco, alcohol, gambling, hard drugs—the pattern is always the same. Over-indulgence, dependency, inability to stop or control your behaviour, self-loathing, shame. You see it in Sarah every day but you will not name it. These children, like so many of their parents, have been enslaved.

This we know. But then the question arises: what is enslaving them? What could cause this behaviour to grip an entire population in under two decades? To spread like a virus, to change people and their society so utterly? What could enslave so many people against their own will, rewire their neural connections, alter their worldview? What could make such a swift and terrible change to our public and social behaviour? Do you remember when the British were renowned for their manners, Bridget? For their stoicism, their “Blitz spirit,” their stiff upper lip? I know, I am showing my age again. But what a swift and terrible change it has been. The hatred, the anger, the division, the abuse, the insults, the proud stupidity, the mobs rampaging through the virtual avenues. It has all come about so quickly. It is as if people are possessed.

Possessed. This single word, for me, was the spark.

Keep reading. This is when it gets spiritual. Uncle Richard doesn’t write as a Christian, but as a historian:

But here is a question for you, Niece, a gauntlet cast down: what if modernity was wrong all along? What if our way of seeing is a cul-de-sac from which we will be forced to retreat; if our precious Enlightenment was not an escape from a superstitious past, but a pulling of the wool over our own eyes?

What if humanity, for hundreds of thousands of years, in its myriad cultural forms, on its countless continents and islands, in its multiplicity of languages and speech patterns—what if that old humanity, rooted as it was to the Earth, to the source of all life and mystery, understood the world better than a group of arrogant, autistic men in seventeenth-century Europe? What if those men—those founders of our world—were so blindsided by their left-brain cleverness and their sense of cultural superiority that they fooled themselves into believing the world was something other than it actually was?

They thought they had de-souled the universe, those men. They thought they had killed God, dispelled the demons. Men like that still do. Men like that work every day to bring us paradise, and instead they bring us Birkenau and Hiroshima. Soon, they will eliminate life itself from this Earth in their quest for a rational map to replace the chaotic territory. Forgive me, Bridget, I rant and rave: but you see, if the ancients were right, there are multiple layers of reality. There are planes and veils and sephirots, abysses and hollow hills, and we are far from the smartest creatures inhabiting any of them.

Uncle Richard lays out his belief that the Internet and the smartphone open a vector inside us through which demonic spirits of hatred, conflict, lust, and so forth, pour in. You might think this sounds crazy, but read the story; it’s chilling. Bridget’s response includes this:

I don’t think you’re mad, Uncle, but I do think you’re wrong. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t believe that the internet is a portal for demons.

I believe it’s a portal for something else.

Let me explain: when I’m finished, you might find that your poor, harried niece has more in common with you than you might think.

Her alternative theory is pretty mind-blowing too.

Read it all. You can also hear Kingsnorth read the story aloud at that link.

The basilisk is a mythological creature, the king of serpents, who can cause death by its gaze. Clearly Kingsnorth thinks that the smartphone is a kind of basilisk. It’s also a technology that we cannot master, and can’t un-know; it shapes who we are and where we live, even if we are one of the few people left who don’t have one.

You don’t have to believe in demons, or in the alternative theory proposed by Bridget, to recognize that the effects Paul Kingsnorth are talking about are quite real. If demons do exist, and if they wanted to destroy humanity, would the technology of the smartphone (and the Internet) be a fantastic way to accomplish that goal? What Kingsnorth is trying to do is not to get the reader to believe in demons. He’s trying to illuminate the work of destruction by this form of technology. Kingsnorth, who moved with his wife and children from England to rural Ireland, is a fascinating writer — imagine Wendell Berry mixed with a generous dash of Tolkien. Go to his website and read some of his essays.

Thought experiment: Do you think that the self-destruction of American society now underway would have happened without the Internet and the smartphone, which allows it to be with you constantly?

UPDATE: Reader Nate J.:

No, this doesn’t sound crazy. It is, however, one of those things that is so true and profound and undeniable (and anyone who tells you that they cannot recognize this obvious truth in his own life or family is kidding himself and rationalizing) that it may drive you mad to think about it too much.

Whether or not you believe in literal demons and the real existence of evil in this world, or whether you think “demons” should be understood more metaphorically, it is clear that technology is changing humanity in ways we are fundamentally not equipped for. If I could sum up the prevailing mood of the times right now—the thing that most people feel, but perhaps cannot properly articulate—it would be this: we know we are facing one of history’s great turnings or upheavals, the type that only happens once every century or so, and yet we know that we are not ready for it.

I’m not saying that any generation is ever truly ready for these great historical upheavals (or else these types of events wouldn’t be that history-changing, would they?), but we also seem to intuitively understand that healthy, strong, dynamic, vibrant societies are able to get through adversity or, in some remarkable cases, even become stronger by it. “Iron sharpens iron.” The people who experienced the last historical overhaul (1914-1945) are known as the greatest generation for good reason.

You cannot help but see that the vitality and hardness and resiliency of our culture has been totally drained out of us. Even those who appear to have all the vitality going in their favor right now, the radical left, I mean… come on. Look at them.

These people have PTSD style panic attacks from mild confrontation with opposing views points. The socialist party gathers and waves their fingers in the air effeminately to avoid the “triggering” sound of applause. Young activists go blockade railways and highways while making TikTok dance videos. After spending a breezy day chanting pre-made BLM slogans in the inner cities, our cultural warriors withdraw back to the cozy suburbs, stop in at a Starbucks, leave the signs outside the door, and sip a latte as a hard-earned reward for fighting the man. With any luck, they came away with an iPhone or two from the smashed window of a store.

Isn’t it the perfect metaphor for society that a movement ostensibly about justice, peace, civil liberties (big, weighty issues and ideas) got so easily distracted by looting and scoring a stash of fleeting material riches? The uncle in “The Basilisk” is absolutely correct when he says that not only can we as a culture not write anymore, we have trouble absorbing ideas presented in any capacity or medium. Ideas are not and, more importantly, cannot be (even if we wanted that) the driving force anymore.

We are left facing great turmoil and every single person reading this knows we have no special skills, abilities, or basic moral character to carry us through it. We know we are navigating into an unavoidable storm, and yet we’re sitting in a cheap, low-quality dinghy, probably made in China. There is no getting through this storm with the boat we have, and yet there is no time to build a better one. It is what it is. Alea iacta est.

The post Gazing Upon The Basilisk appeared first on The American Conservative.

‘Systemic Racism’: An Uncontestable Axiom

So I guess this is how it’s going to be everywhere, for the foreseeable future:

More than 1,200 current employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have signed a letter calling for the federal agency to address “ongoing and recurring acts of racism and discrimination” against Black employees, NPR has learned.

In the letter, addressed to CDC Director Robert Redfield and dated June 30, the authors put their call for change in the context of the coronavirus pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Black people and the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks. NPR obtained a copy of the letter, which is published below.

“In light of the recent calls for justice across this country and around the world, we, as dedicated public health professionals, can no longer stay silent to the widespread acts of racism and discrimination within CDC that are, in fact, undermining the agency’s core mission,” the letter reads.

More:

In the letter, the authors point to a variety of “well-meaning, yet under-funded” efforts to diversify the agency’s workforce over the past several decades and assert that none of them have made much difference. They note that Black employees represent only 10% of senior leadership and 6% of the CDC’s 2019 class of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a fellowship program described as “the training ground for tomorrow’s leaders within the agency.”

It describes an “old boy/girl network,” where white managers promote white staff while allegedly stifling and discouraging Black staff, and a “pervasive and toxic culture of racial aggressions.” It also says that hundreds of Equal Employment Opportunity complaints have been filed by Black employees in the past decades, many of them unresolved.

Read it all. 

Is it true? Well, how would I know? Here’s the thing: how can we know if these claims made in the letter are true? Is there any way to contest them, to falsify them? Practically speaking, I don’t think there is. You’re going to be the manager who tells black people who signed the letter that actually, their claims are in any way inaccurate, unfair, or wrong? Unthinkable. Don’t misunderstand: these grievances might well be justified. My point is that for all intents and purposes, in this cultural environment, it is impossible to challenge them.

I was googling today and found an interview on YouTube with a black undergraduate at Princeton, who asserted that the university was racist.  The interviewer asked him for examples of Princeton’s racism. He could not come up with a single example! But this did not deter him. He said that Princeton was “structurally racist.” Maybe it is, I dunno. But again, is this a testable hypothesis? If it’s not a testable hypothesis — I mean that as a matter of cultural politics — then what does that mean? It means that if you are part of an “oppressed minority,” you can get whatever you want just by demanding it, because those running our institutions lack the confidence to challenge you.

Look what happened to Princeton’s Joshua Katz today: because he had the nerve to criticize a militant black student group that relied on intimidation to achieve its campus goals, he was denounced by Princeton’s president, and has now been denounced by his department, which accused him of putting all black people who are now and who ever were at Princeton “at serious risk.” It is a lie. It is a slanderous lie designed to silence Joshua Katz and destroy academic freedom. And these pusillanimous faculty and college administrators are going along with it.

Read the text of the Classics department statement. It’s all about hurt feelings and groundless assertion of racist harm. How can anybody claim with a straight face that a Classics professor harshly criticizing student militants puts them or anybody else “at serious risk” of anything, other than being fawned over by other academics and college administrators?

A friend of mine describes America today like this (and he’s talking about right wingers as well as left wingers):

(1) I am my desires

(2) Justice is the fulfilling of my desires, injustice is the impeding of my desires

(3) You are either the ally or the enemy of my desires

(4) If you are the ally, I will tolerate you; if you are the enemy, I will seek to destroy you.

This is why there does not have to be any falsifiable claims made at the CDC, or Princeton, or anywhere else. Objectivity is beside the point. This is all about power and desire.

Here’s some related education news from Philadelphia, via the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Angela Crawford has said it for years: Philadelphia schools can’t make meaningful improvements until there’s a reckoning over the racial injustices that underpin the education system.

As a veteran English teacher at Martin Luther King High School, Crawford has lamented a lack of cultural competence and systems that disadvantage Black children and other students of color, leading to disparities in achievement, discipline, and access to elite classes and schools. The way to begin fixing it, she said, is a move toward antiracist curriculum and away from practices that center only on the experiences of white people.

Antiracism, Crawford said, “needs to be the overarching theme of every single school in the city.”

What does this mean? Every single school in Philadelphia must center everything on “antiracism”? Why?

Don’t expect the Inquirer to tell you. The reporter does nothing but repeat the assertions of advocates. It could well be that the reporter understands all this better than I do. As James Lindsay writes, “antiracism” is a standard Social Justice term, one that assumes pervasive racism. More:

The identification of racism against non-white people in any situation is always possible and rarely, if ever, falsifiable because it does not have to be intentional or conscious (see also, impact versus intent). For example, if a black customer and a white customer entered a store at the same time, and the white sales assistant approached the white customer to offer help first, this could be identified as racism because it prioritized the white person’s needs (see also, centering). However, if the sales assistant approached the black customer first, this could also be identified as racism because it could be read as indicating a distrust of black people and unwillingness to have them browse the shelves unsupervised. The shop assistant’s perception of her own motivations are irrelevant, and, to be a conscientious antiracist, she would need to admit her racism and pledge to do better.

In fact, the antiracism approach would start from the following assumption, as phrased by critical race educator Robin DiAngelo (author of White Fragility): “the question is not ‘did racism take place?’ but rather, ‘how did racism manifest in this situation?’”

This is going to become the new standard, I guess. More from the Philadelphia Inquirer report:

Philadelphia’s actions are happening as some school districts across the nation are moving in the same direction. Detroit’s school board recently promised antiracist measures; closer to home, the Bethlehem, Pa., district has done the same, and its superintendent, Joseph Roy, has said that “our curriculum needs to expose our students to the history and horrors of racism.”

The American Association of School Administrators has called upon its members to move beyond equity into antiracism because “we are living at a time of obscene inequities and merely trying to compensate is not enough,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director. “Now is the time for all educational leaders to intensify our commitment to address inequities and work to dismantle systemic racism.”

Ah, so that’s it. Systemic racism is why black educational achievement in elementary and secondary school is so lagging. The black economist Walter Williams wrote earlier this year, about black students:

As of 2016, in Philadelphia, only 19% of eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 16% were proficient in reading. In Detroit, only 4% of its eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 7% were proficient in reading.

National Assessment of Education Progress tests give further testament to the tragedy. In Philadelphia, 47% of its students scored below basic in math and 42% scored below basic in reading. Below basic means that a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his or her grade level.

Last year, Charles D. Ellison, a black Philadelphia journalist, published a blockbuster column denouncing Philly’s educational system as failing black and brown kids. It’s full of details. Ellison believes the problem mainly has to do with the widespread poverty of the city’s public school population, and lack of proper school funding. Whether he’s right or wrong about that, it’s arguable. Notice what he’s not claiming? That teaching “antiracism” is the answer to the school system’s problems. So, when thoroughly racializing the public schools fails to create utopia, and in fact does nothing but increase anger and racial tension, what will the progressives do then?

My point here is that claims of systemic racism in particular institutions are now accepted and repeated as fact, and that it is practically impossible to criticize or reject those claims in any way. “Systemic racism” is as fundamental to the construal of reality in the fast-emerging social order as “class conflict” was in Marxist social orders. It is the uncontestable axiom on which the entire ideological structure is built. Deny that, and you’re part of the racist system.

It would actually be useful to learn ways in which racism is built into systems and structures, so we could work to dismantle and overcome them. But that is not what this is about. If you can’t prove that particular claims of systemic racism are wrong, you have no reliable way of proving that they are correct either. Again, though, what is true and what is false is a sideshow. The real deal is about power. And once more, this is how we think in America today:

(1) I am my desires

(2) Justice is the fulfilling of my desires, injustice is the impeding of my desires

(3) You are either the ally or the enemy of my desires

(4) If you are the ally, I will tolerate you; if you are the enemy, I will seek to destroy you.

The post ‘Systemic Racism’: An Uncontestable Axiom appeared first on The American Conservative.

Polish Right’s Narrow Victory

It no doubt ruined Anne Applebaum’s day, but I was pleased to hear that the incumbent president Andrzej Duda of the Law and Justice Party in Poland won re-election in a squeaker.  The Washington Post‘s account reflects the agony of the globalist class and its press organs over this result, but this is a very important detail:

An exit poll on Sunday, which showed a result too close to call, painted a picture of a country divided along lines of age and geography. While [Warsaw Mayor Rafal] Trzaskowski comfortably won over voters under 50, according to the exit poll, Duda drew support from the older generation.

Trzaskowski primarily won in the wealthier and more economically developed cities, while Duda prevailed in Poland’s strongly Catholic and poorer countryside, notably in the east. Duda’s campaign had sought to highlight the expansion of social benefits under Law and Justice party rule, which has mainly helped voters in rural areas that are right-wing strongholds.

Check this out:

Poland, Presidential election run-off

IPSOS exit poll shows Trzaskowski (PO-EPP) received more votes in age group 18-49, while Duda (*-ECR) in age group 50-60+#Wybory2020 #WyboryPrezydenckie pic.twitter.com/lDa0XKTLL9

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) July 12, 2020

I’m 53 years old, and given my political priors, if I were in Poland, I probably would have been a Duda voter. Seeing the exit poll results, however, brought to mind the conversations I had with younger Polish Catholic conservatives when I was there last year. If you were reading this blog then, you will recall how taken aback I was by these Catholics — all in their twenties — telling me that they expected Poland to go the way of Ireland in a decade or two. That is, they expect a mass and almost sudden de-Christianization. I emphasize that every person who told me that is a practicing Catholic. They absolutely to not want this. But this is what they see coming, and they don’t know how to stop it. They believe that the leadership in the Church is hiding from the ugly truth.

The first time I heard this, I thought it can’t possibly be true. But then I kept hearing it, in Warsaw and then in Krakow. Finally I asked a well-respected older priest if it was true, and he said yes, sadly, it is. My American conservative ideal of Poland as Fortress Wojtyla was shattered by all this.

Last night, with the exit poll results just in, I wrote to my friend Lukasz Kozuchowski in Warsaw, to ask him what he thought of the election results. Lukasz is a history grad student who was my translator when I was in Warsaw last year doing interviews for Live Not By Lies. He was the first Pole to tell me that Catholicism is in real trouble in Poland. And though he is a conservative, theologically and otherwise, he also predicted big problems for the political Right. I had no idea what he would say about this weekend’s election, but I told him I would print whatever he said, with his permission.

This is how he responded:

We now have the official results: Duda received 51,2% of votes, Trzaskowski – 48,8%. As we see, Duda’s victory is not a decisive one.

The reasons for this are numerous. First of all, Duda won only among 50+ voters (as exit-poll suggests). In this age group his victory was unquestionable — and this is why Duda won in general. In all age groups below 50, Duda lost with Trzaskowski. Among my generation (20-30 year old), the Trzaskowski vote was sweeping. This shows that we have an abyss between older and younger voters in Poland, and in our society in general.

I am far from saying that everyone who voted Duda did it because of cultural reasons. In fact, Duda’s party, Law and Justice, claims to be a Catholic party, but barely does anything to introduce Catholic values to Polish politics and society. They quote John Paul II or ostentatiously take part in liturgies, but nothing more.

For instance, they openly support these bishops who covered pedophiles in their dioceses. They also turned down a few petitions asking for making abortion law in Poland less liberal, for no rational reason (they have a strong majority in the parliament). Sometimes they even make Christianity seem ridiculous or despotic. A few weeks ago one of Duda’s officials publicly said that he “regards LGBT people as inferior to normal people,” causing an outcry even among Polish conservative Catholics.

 

Lukasz Kozuchowski and Self discussing serious matters in Warsaw last autumn

More Kozuchowski:

But there is a reason why people vote for Duda and Law and Justice: introducing social programs, like the minimum hourly wage. Due to this, many people from middle and lower classes consider Duda as their defender against ruthless neoliberal policies, which dominated in Poland after 1989. I would say that Duda voters voted for him mostly for socioeconomic reasons, while the cultural aspects were in second, or even third, place.

Duda and Law and Justice are far from being ideal. As recent social research show, they are widely regarded as incompetent. Many of my friends who work for the government or for state agencies say that Law and Justice has utterly no idea how to administrate the state, and it is really a miracle that our country has not already collapsed. They are widely regarded as bad politicians, but people vote for them merely because they consider others to be even worse.

Nevertheless, this clearly shows in which direction in which our politics and society are heading. We still have self-proclaimed Catholics in power, but these Catholics do not make any real Christian changes in law and government. On the other hand, Trzaskowski and his Civic Platform are not so lazy. They openly declare themselves to be reluctant about faith, vigorously support the LGBTQ agenda, promise to liberalize abortion law, and introduce liberal tax reforms that would hit the poorest and benefit the rich.

Most Poles in my age strongly support these proposals. Those who do not might have voted for Trzaskowski  because of Law and Justice’s incompetence in ruling its affairs, and its highly controversial reforms, like juridical ones. More and more people, even Catholics, are starting to believe that it is Trzaskowski and Civic Platform who are the “lesser evil,” not Duda and Law and Justice. Trzaskowski also declared that he will not remove Law and Justice’s social reforms, so some of those who were afraid of Trzaskowski’s neoliberal attitudes were also appeased. While I personally do not share this point of view, I cannot say that it is utterly without merit.

We are losing the culture war in Poland. In fact we have already lost it. It is a mere matter of time. Not because our opponents are too strong,  but because the Catholics in power are too incompetent and aimed narrowly at winning the next election at any cost. In a few years, when the oldest voters will have passed away, the Polish electorate will get rid of incompetent Catholics and replace them with efficient liberals.

I hate to hear that, but we can’t keep our heads in the ground. Besides, this sounds familiar to American ears. In a private exchange last week, an American college student and reader of my blog told me (I paraphrase):

After Trump, you will never see another Republican president in your lifetime. The brand is too toxic among people my age. It doesn’t matter whether or not we’re Democrats — we’re never going to vote Republican after this.

The student is an independent and a churchgoing Christian who leans left because of climate change and economic insecurity. A Bernie Bro type, though not really ideological. He said he believes that the GOP offers him nothing, and that Trump has catalyzed such hatred for the Republican Party in his generation that no Republican candidate in the future, no matter how competent and attractive, will be able to overcome the disadvantage.

The American student who told me that is three years younger than Lukasz Kozuchowski. Make of that what you will. What’s happening in Poland is only the local version of what’s happening all over the West.

The post Polish Right’s Narrow Victory appeared first on The American Conservative.

Polish Right’s Pyrrhic Victory

It no doubt ruined Anne Applebaum’s day, but I was pleased to hear that the incumbent president Andrzej Duda of the Law and Justice Party in Poland won re-election in a squeaker.  The Washington Post‘s account reflects the agony of the globalist class and its press organs over this result, but this is a very important detail:

An exit poll on Sunday, which showed a result too close to call, painted a picture of a country divided along lines of age and geography. While [Warsaw Mayor Rafal] Trzaskowski comfortably won over voters under 50, according to the exit poll, Duda drew support from the older generation.

Trzaskowski primarily won in the wealthier and more economically developed cities, while Duda prevailed in Poland’s strongly Catholic and poorer countryside, notably in the east. Duda’s campaign had sought to highlight the expansion of social benefits under Law and Justice party rule, which has mainly helped voters in rural areas that are right-wing strongholds.

Check this out:

Poland, Presidential election run-off

IPSOS exit poll shows Trzaskowski (PO-EPP) received more votes in age group 18-49, while Duda (*-ECR) in age group 50-60+#Wybory2020 #WyboryPrezydenckie pic.twitter.com/lDa0XKTLL9

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) July 12, 2020

I’m 53 years old, and given my political priors, if I were in Poland, I probably would have been a Duda voter. Seeing the exit poll results, however, brought to mind the conversations I had with younger Polish Catholic conservatives when I was there last year. If you were reading this blog then, you will recall how taken aback I was by these Catholics — all in their twenties — telling me that they expected Poland to go the way of Ireland in a decade or two. That is, they expect a mass and almost sudden de-Christianization. I emphasize that every person who told me that is a practicing Catholic. They absolutely to not want this. But this is what they see coming, and they don’t know how to stop it. They believe that the leadership in the Church is hiding from the ugly truth.

The first time I heard this, I thought it can’t possibly be true. But then I kept hearing it, in Warsaw and then in Krakow. Finally I asked a well-respected older priest if it was true, and he said yes, sadly, it is. My American conservative ideal of Poland as Fortress Wojtyla was shattered by all this.

Last night, with the exit poll results just in, I wrote to my friend Lukasz Kozuchowski in Warsaw, to ask him what he thought of the election results. Lukasz is a history grad student who was my translator when I was in Warsaw last year doing interviews for Live Not By Lies. He was the first Pole to tell me that Catholicism is in real trouble in Poland. And though he is a conservative, theologically and otherwise, he also predicted big problems for the political Right. I had no idea what he would say about this weekend’s election, but I told him I would print whatever he said, with his permission.

This is how he responded:

We now have the official results: Duda received 51,2% of votes, Trzaskowski – 48,8%. As we see, Duda’s victory is not a decisive one.

The reasons for this are numerous. First of all, Duda won only among 50+ voters (as exit-poll suggests). In this age group his victory was unquestionable — and this is why Duda won in general. In all age groups below 50, Duda lost with Trzaskowski. Among my generation (20-30 year old), the Trzaskowski vote was sweeping. This shows that we have an abyss between older and younger voters in Poland, and in our society in general.

I am far from saying that everyone who voted Duda did it because of cultural reasons. In fact, Duda’s party, Law and Justice, claims to be a Catholic party, but barely does anything to introduce Catholic values to Polish politics and society. They quote John Paul II or ostentatiously take part in liturgies, but nothing more.

For instance, they openly support these bishops who covered pedophiles in their dioceses. They also turned down a few petitions asking for making abortion law in Poland less liberal, for no rational reason (they have a strong majority in the parliament). Sometimes they even make Christianity seem ridiculous or despotic. A few weeks ago one of Duda’s officials publicly said that he “regards LGBT people as inferior to normal people,” causing an outcry even among Polish conservative Catholics.

 

Lukasz Kozuchowski and Self discussing serious matters in Warsaw last autumn

More Kozuchowski:

But there is a reason why people vote for Duda and Law and Justice: introducing social programs, like the minimum hourly wage. Due to this, many people from middle and lower classes consider Duda as their defender against ruthless neoliberal policies, which dominated in Poland after 1989. I would say that Duda voters voted for him mostly for socioeconomic reasons, while the cultural aspects were in second, or even third, place.

Duda and Law and Justice are far from being ideal. As recent social research show, they are widely regarded as incompetent. Many of my friends who work for the government or for state agencies say that Law and Justice has utterly no idea how to administrate the state, and it is really a miracle that our country has not already collapsed. They are widely regarded as bad politicians, but people vote for them merely because they consider others to be even worse.

Nevertheless, this clearly shows in which direction in which our politics and society are heading. We still have self-proclaimed Catholics in power, but these Catholics do not make any real Christian changes in law and government. On the other hand, Trzaskowski and his Civic Platform are not so lazy. They openly declare themselves to be reluctant about faith, vigorously support the LGBTQ agenda, promise to liberalize abortion law, and introduce liberal tax reforms that would hit the poorest and benefit the rich.

Most Poles in my age strongly support these proposals. Those who do not might have voted for Trzaskowski  because of Law and Justice’s incompetence in ruling its affairs, and its highly controversial reforms, like juridical ones. More and more people, even Catholics, are starting to believe that it is Trzaskowski and Civic Platform who are the “lesser evil,” not Duda and Law and Justice. Trzaskowski also declared that he will not remove Law and Justice’s social reforms, so some of those who were afraid of Trzaskowski’s neoliberal attitudes were also appeased. While I personally do not share this point of view, I cannot say that it is utterly without merit.

We are losing the culture war in Poland. In fact we have already lost it. It is a mere matter of time. Not because our opponents are too strong,  but because the Catholics in power are too incompetent and aimed narrowly at winning the next election at any cost. In a few years, when the oldest voters will have passed away, the Polish electorate will get rid of incompetent Catholics and replace them with efficient liberals.

I hate to hear that, but we can’t keep our heads in the ground. Besides, this sounds familiar to American ears. In a private exchange last week, an American college student and reader of my blog told me (I paraphrase):

After Trump, you will never see another Republican president in your lifetime. The brand is too toxic among people my age. It doesn’t matter whether or not we’re Democrats — we’re never going to vote Republican after this.

The student is an independent and a churchgoing Christian who leans left because of climate change and economic insecurity. A Bernie Bro type, though not really ideological. He said he believes that the GOP offers him nothing, and that Trump has catalyzed such hatred for the Republican Party in his generation that no Republican candidate in the future, no matter how competent and attractive, will be able to overcome the disadvantage.

The American student who told me that is three years younger than Lukasz Kozuchowski. Make of that what you will. What’s happening in Poland is only the local version of what’s happening all over the West.

The post Polish Right’s Pyrrhic Victory appeared first on The American Conservative.

Katz Showdown At Princeton

Joshua T. Katz, a distinguished Classics professor at Princeton, published a brave essay on Quillette the other day, criticizing a lengthy list of demands by woke Princeton professors. He said there are some things he agrees with. On the other hand:

But then there are dozens of proposals that, if implemented, would lead to civil war on campus and erode even further public confidence in how elite institutions of higher education operate. Some examples: “Reward the invisible work done by faculty of color with course relief and summer salary” and “Faculty of color hired at the junior level should be guaranteed one additional semester of sabbatical” and “Provide additional human resources for the support of junior faculty of color.” Let’s leave aside who qualifies as “of color,” though this is not a trivial point. It boggles my mind that anyone would advocate giving people—extraordinarily privileged people already, let me point out: Princeton professors—extra perks for no reason other than their pigmentation.

Prof. Katz responded to the list’s demand that Princeton apologize to members of the “Black Justice League.” Writes Katz:

The Black Justice League, which was active on campus from 2014 until 2016, was a small local terrorist organization that made life miserable for the many (including the many black students) who did not agree with its members’ demands. Recently I watched an “Instagram Live” of one of its alumni leaders, who—emboldened by recent events and egged on by over 200 supporters who were baying for blood—presided over what was effectively a Struggle Session against one of his former classmates. It was one of the most evil things I have ever witnessed, and I do not say this lightly.

Back in 2015, when the Black Justice League got going, and occupied the Princeton president’s office, two Princeton seniors wrote about the campus atmosphere for National Review. Excerpts:

While the group stated publicly that it supports free speech, some members’ words and actions contradict this claim. Protesters purport to seek diversity, but what they really want is conformity.

For example, some protesters publicly shame and stigmatize those who question their demands and methods, thus promoting a campus culture of intimidation. Many non-black students who opposed the protest refrained from voicing their criticism out of fear of being labeled as racists and subjected to ad hominem attacks. Some students resorted to an anonymous forum called Yik-Yak to post statements like, “It’s alarming how few people publicly oppose BJL [protesters] even though I’ve gotten the impression that most people don’t support them,” to which another person replied, “If you publicly speak out against BJL people fear being labeled as a racist.”

More:

Many students have witnessed that detrimental labeling firsthand. After attending the protest, I (Devon) was so shocked by what I saw that I felt compelled to speak out against their demands and tactics. In an op-ed in Princeton’s student newspaper, titled “We can do better,” I point out the hypocrisy of anti-racism protesters’ making race-based judgments: “As a fundamental principle of equality, the weight of a person’s opinions should not be a function of their skin color but rather the quality of their arguments.” This article alone caused a group of protesters to scream profanities at me while accusing me of being racist and request that I not be allowed to attend an open forum to voice my opinion. A Black Justice League leader reinforced this fear when she responded to another student’s article by writing that because of his “white privilege” his opinion was “moot” and “of miniscule value.” By focusing on the race of an opponent or portraying him or her as racist, protesters seek to shut down debate rather than engage them with legitimate points of disagreement.

Minority students are also subjected to this racially divisive and stigmatizing rhetoric. For instance, after posting a Facebook status questioning protesters’ demands, a dissenting black sophomore was told by a protest leader to suppress his opinion and instead “stand in solidarity” and support “your people.” He was told that white people did not care about him and that his black peers would pray for him — as if his free thought were a mortal sin. It is appalling that anyone in our nation, let alone a college student who cherishes academic debate, is treated like a traitor or “white sympathizer” for simply expressing thoughts contrary to those of other students of his race. Similarly, Hispanic and black students who oppose the protesters have been called “tokens” of their white peers. The message is clear: Conformity to the protesters’ worldview is required; there is no room for diversity of thought.

Read it all. 

I have no trouble believing that the Black Justice League depended on terrorizing and otherwise intimidating people at Princeton to get what they wanted. If the “Struggle Session” is what Katz says it is, then I have no problem at all calling an organization that carries out such things “terrorist.” (If anybody has a link to that video, please share it.) But for the sake of argument, let’s say that Katz rhetorically exaggerated. So what? If a Princeton professor called a campus conservative group “fascist,” we would roll our eyes, but that would be the end of it.

But that’s not how things happen at Princeton now. We see clearly who has privilege at Princeton, and who does not, in what is now happening to Joshua Katz. Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber, whose office was occupied by the Black Justice League a few years ago, has denounced Katz for abusing free speech. From the Daily Princetonian:

“While free speech permits students and faculty to make arguments that are bold, provocative, or even offensive, we all have an obligation to exercise that right responsibly,” Eisgruber said in a statement to The Daily Princetonian. “Joshua Katz has failed to do so, and I object personally and strongly to his false description of a Princeton student group as a ‘local terrorist organization.’”

“By ignoring the critical distinction between lawful protest and unlawful violence, Dr. Katz has unfairly disparaged members of the Black Justice League, students who protested and spoke about controversial topics but neither threatened nor committed any violent acts,” Eisgruber added.

What a coward. It is Eisgruber’s place to defend free speech by faculty members, not kowtow to radicals. Here’s more from the Princetonian story:

Fellow Classics professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta ’06, who helped spearhead the faculty open letter, said Katz’s “flagrant racism makes our case for us.”

“My fury at the op-ed quickly took a backseat to the realization that it is a racist distraction, intended to divert and disorient those of us who have found common cause and strength in collaborating for a better future,” Padilla Peralta wrote the ‘Prince.’ “And so, in the words of the great American lyricist Method Man, we keep it movin’.”

Eddie S. Glaude GS ’97, chair of the African American Studies Department, said that Katz’s column, particularly his statement about the BJL, betrayed that this “wasn’t about a simple disagreement,” but rather a difference in fundamental values.

“Professor Katz, at times in this letter, seems to not regard people like me as essential features, or persons, of Princeton,” Glaude said in an interview.  “That’s the feeling I got from reading the letter.”

“When the Black Justice League engaged in its student action, they experienced violent threats,” Glaude added. “So what that description minimally does is trigger all of those experiences.”

Glaude signed the faculty open letter.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, the name Dan-el Padilla Peralta may be familiar to you. I wrote about him here.He condemned his own academic field, Classics, as racist, and openly called for the suppression of scholarly publications by white people and men, for the sake of social justice. This is a Classics professor at Princeton. He is an anti-white racist. And people like him are driving things at elite universities, because people like Eisgruber, who ought to be defending liberal institutions and the values upon which they are founded, have spines made of soggy tissue.

The Princeton faculty letter to which Katz responded calls for

a committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty, following a protocol for grievance and appeal to be spelled out in Rules and Procedures of the Faculty. Guidelines on what counts as racist behavior, incidents, research, and publication will be authored by a faculty committee for incorporation into the same set of rules and procedures.

These faculty actually want commissars. And somehow, Joshua Katz is the real problem at Princeton?

I presume Katz has tenure, and will be hard to fire. But the university, and his department, can make his life miserable. We know now that the administration at Princeton will not stand by Katz.

What about other professors at Princeton? Are you going to let them devour Katz, and hope the totalitarian beast will be satisfied, and won’t come for you?

And at other colleges? It is time for academics to lawyer up to defend themselves. This isn’t going away.

UPDATE: This statement went out from the Princeton Classics Department today:

A Message to the Community

Last week our colleague Joshua Katz, identifying himself as a professor of classics at Princeton, published a public essay attacking an open letter recommending a series of specific anti-racist actions at the University and signed by many members of the Princeton faculty. The author does not speak for the Department. The views expressed are his and his alone.

The language in which those views are expressed – “terrorist organization,” “baying for blood,” “one of the most evil things I have ever witnessed,” all in the context of vilifying a Black student activist group – activates a long history of language used in this country to incite racial and specifically anti-Black violence. The use of such language is abhorrent at this moment of national reckoning with the continuing legacy of systemic racism and violence, and it has heedlessly put our Black colleagues, students, and alums at serious risk. It is fundamentally incompatible with our mission and values as educators.

We recognize the anger this language has provoked within our community. We mourn the distress and harm it has already caused, especially to students, alums, and colleagues of color.  We gratefully acknowledge all the forms of anti-racist work that members of our community have done and are doing. We affirm our strong commitment to working together to make our department, our field, and our university community more just and equitable.

Michael Attyah Flower, Chair

Brooke Holmes, Director of Graduate Studies

Joshua Billings, Director of Undergraduate Studies

Andrew Feldherr, Chair of the Equity and Inclusion Committee

I find this revolting. The simpering totalitarian language of emotivism: “has heedlessly put our Black colleagues, students, and alums at serious risk. … anger … distress and harm.” This because a white professor dared to criticize a militant black student group that intimidated students and occupied the president’s office.

These people are among the most privileged in the world, and they are totalitarians who are destroying education. God knows how Joshua Katz is going to do his job in that nest of vipers now.

The post Katz Showdown At Princeton appeared first on The American Conservative.

Soft Totalitarian Epistemology

Heather Mac Donald has published an important op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, making public a deeply concerning instance of racial politics corrupting scholarship and public policy. The article is behind a paywall, unfortunately, but subscribers can read it. Excerpts:

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is a peer-reviewed journal that claims to publish “only the highest quality scientific research.” Now, the authors of a 2019 PNAS article are disowning their research simply because I cited it.

Psychologists Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland analyzed 917 fatal police shootings of civilians from 2015 to test whether the race of the officer or the civilian predicted fatal police shootings. Neither did. Once “race specific rates of violent crime” are taken into account, the authors found, there are no disparities among those fatally shot by the police. These findings accord with decades of research showing that civilian behavior is the greatest influence on police behavior.

Mac Donald cited this research in Congressional testimony and elsewhere. When she cited it in a June 3 WSJ op-ed, things blew up at Michigan State. The university’s Graduate Student Union blasted the university for “the harm it caused” (the study), and went after physicist Stephen Hsu, who approved funding for Cesario’s research, forcing Hsu out.

And now, as Mac Donald writes, the paper’s authors have withdrawn it. From that PNAS page:

Mac Donald says the scholars falsely accuse her of saying that the probability of being shot by police does not differ between blacks and whites. Mac Donald says that it’s undeniable that blacks are more likely to be shot by police than whites, but that is because blacks are far more likely to be involved in criminal activity. This is extremely well documented. What Mac Donald disputes is that the shooting rate disparity is because of police racism.

Mac Donald says the withdrawal of the paper is a very bad sign for scholarship. If one can’t publish scholarship that runs counter to politically powerful narratives — as happened to Brown University’s Lisa Littmann, whose 2018 paper got on the wrong side of transgender activists — how can we know how to respond to facts in the world? Mac Donald says that if we don’t understand how policing works, there will be deleterious real-world consequences (there already are, Mac Donald says, with the spike in fatal shootings this spring).

Meanwhile, it sounds like Brooklyn College is going to be as enthusiastic about the new political orthodoxy as the Brezhnev-era Siberian Mathematics Journal was about Leninist ciphering:

From the Brooklyn College president:

What does this mean? Affirmative action grade inflation? Endless racial ideologizing of the university’s teaching? Here is a link to a collection of academic essays about “antiracist pedagogy” published by the University of Colorado. Excerpts:

If you grade writing by a so-called standard, let’s call it Standard English, then you are engaged in an institutional and disciplinary racism, a system set up to make winners and losers by a dominant standard. Who owns the dominant standard?

I really encourage you to spend some time reading that essay collection. It’s jargony, but it’s really important to understand what these educators are talking about when they speak of “antiracist pedagogy.” If you think it’s merely a matter of being more sensitive to the way race is spoken of in classrooms, oh my sweet summer child, do I have news for you. This is totalitarian madness. I’m not exaggerating: “antiracist pedagogy” is about turning the entire process of education into a paralyzing, endless process of analyzing racial and power relations, and inculcating this kind of radical racial suspicion within students.

In my forthcoming book Live Not By Lies, I talk about how these radical academics, burrowing away within the institutions, produce social change. Excerpt:

In our populist era, politicians and talk-radio polemicists can rile up a crowd by denouncing elites. Nevertheless, in most societies, intellectual and cultural elites determine its long-term direction. “[T]he key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network and the new institutions that are created out of those networks,” writes sociologist James Davison Hunter. Though a revolutionary idea might emerge from the masses, says Hunter, “it does not gain traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites” working through their “well-developed networks and powerful institutions.”

This is why it is critically important to keep an eye on intellectual discourse. Those who do not will leave the gates unguarded. As the Polish dissident and émigré Czesław Miłosz put it, “It was only toward the middle of the twentieth century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy.”

Your fate, reader, and the fate of your children, is being determined right now by intricate and abstruse works of social criticism and theory. You cannot afford to be indifferent to what is happening. More:

Arendt warns that the twentieth-century totalitarian experience shows how a determined and skillful minority can come to rule over an indifferent and disengaged majority. In our time, most people regard the politically correct insanity of campus radicals as not worthy of attention. They mock them as “snowflakes” and “social justice warriors.”

This is a serious mistake. In radicalizing the broader class of elites, social justice warriors (SJWs) are playing a similar historic role to the Bolsheviks in prerevolutionary Russia. SJW ranks are full of middle-class, secular, educated young people wracked by guilt and anxiety over their own privilege, alienated from their own traditions, and desperate to identify with something, or someone, to give them a sense of wholeness and purpose. For them, the ideology of social justice—as defined not by church teaching but by critical theorists in the academy—functions as a pseudo-religion. Far from being confined to campuses and dry intellectual journals, SJW ideals are transforming elite institutions and networks of power and influence.

Pre-order the book here if you like; it will be published on September 29. Whether you read it or not, please, please wake up to the ideological takeover of our institutions, and by the way the seemingly innocent term “antiracist” carries with it a malignancy that will poison anything it touches. Everybody should want to be against racism — but that’s not what this is! This is about colonizing and transforming academia with ideology. What Heather Mac Donald talks about at the beginning of this blog entry is only one form of the soft totalitarian program.

Ibram X. Kendi’s book How To Be Antiracist is currently No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list, where it has been in the top ten for ten weeks. This concept has gone mainstream.

I wrote this blog post on Sunday afternoon, for Monday publication. I’m returning to it late Sunday night to add some material from a powerful WSJ op-ed by physicist Lawrence Krauss, decrying the politicization of science. It’s paywalled, but the whole thing is accessible here, at least as I write this. Excerpts:

In the 1980s, when I was a young professor of physics and astronomy at Yale, deconstructionism was in vogue in the English Department. We in the science departments would scoff at the lack of objective intellectual standards in the humanities, epitomized by a movement that argued against the existence of objective truth itself, arguing that all such claims to knowledge were tainted by ideological biases due to race, sex or economic dominance.

It could never happen in the hard sciences, except perhaps under dictatorships, such as the Nazi condemnation of “Jewish” science, or the Stalinist campaign against genetics led by Trofim Lysenko, in which literally thousands of mainstream geneticists were dismissed in the effort to suppress any opposition to the prevailing political view of the state.

Or so we thought. In recent years, and especially since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, academic science leaders have adopted wholesale the language of dominance and oppression previously restricted to “cultural studies” journals to guide their disciplines, to censor dissenting views, to remove faculty from leadership positions if their research is claimed by opponents to support systemic oppression.

Krauss cites a number of actual instances of this happening, including the above case of the scientists withdrawing their paper because Heather Mac Donald drew unfavorable political conclusions from it. This is not a phantom menace. More Krauss:

Whenever science has been corrupted by falling prey to ideology, scientific progress suffers. This was the case in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union—and in the U.S. in the 19th century when racist views dominated biology, and during the McCarthy era, when prominent scientists like Robert Oppenheimer were ostracized for their political views. To stem the slide, scientific leaders, scientific societies and senior academic administrators must publicly stand up not only for free speech in science, but for quality, independent of political doctrine and divorced from the demands of political factions.

We are either going to have real universities, or we are going to have ideology factories. The time of choosing is now.

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