The Political Science is Settled!

Today at American Thinker there is an interesting piece on the dichotomy in "African American" life between what might be called the liberal descendants of Booker T. Washington and leftist spawn of W.E.B. DuBois. Unfortunately, the author makes a fundamental error in suggesting that Obama's split from Wright is an example of this dichotomy, but otherwise the analysis is sound, and probably even deeper than the author realizes, since it is rooted in cosmic realities, not mere political or manmade ones.

(I see that they've already published a letter from a reader, correctly pointing out that Obama and Wright are in reality "two sides of the same coin, whereas Washington and DuBois were on entirely different coins in manifestly different currencies. Obama is the lipstick on the pig of socialism. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. Wright merely represents unadorned socialism. There is not much to differentiate the two. I would rather liken Wright and Obama to Lenin and Trotsky, fighting about details and appearances, yet seeking the same goal.")

This is indeed the Raccoon view. It becomes especially obvious when one listens to the words of Barack's bitter half,* Michelle Obama, the Queen of Soullessness. I'm sure her whining ways are vetted and approved by the campaign; she is the roiling id to Obama's smooth and superficial ego. (*I'm afraid that Michelle Malkin came up with that one before I could think of it.)

As a brief aside or possibly prelude or even coda, I can, to a certain extent, wimpathize with my critics who are drawn to my spiritual ideas but who detest my politics. For one thing, when one discusses politics in a spiritual context, one must be exceedingly careful to do so as a "prolongation" of the spiritual -- of intrinsically true vertical ideas reflected in the horizontal. One must never misuse perennial truth to "put lipstick on a pig" and to legitimize views that are entirely at odds with spiritual reality. One must be especially careful not to derive metaphysical truth from empirical reality, much less from the shifting political winds of the day, otherwise you end up sounding as trite and silly as, say, Alan Watts. For every sound thing Watts ever said or wrote, he said something else that makes a sensible person cringe.

Likewise, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was in many ways a brilliant philosopher, but what is one to think when one comes across the following insanity: "There is no doubt in Radhakrishnan's mind that violence and democracy are incompatible. He has therefore condemned in unequivocal terms the use of violence for the solution of any human problem." Or "Radhakrishna has always been a critic of capitalism; for he sees it as incompatible with democracy.... In his view capitalism is morally dangerous because it permits and encourages the growth of large disparities between the haves and have-nots," etc. Like virtually every innumerate leftist before and since, he believed in "zero-sum economics," which I believe is genetically programmed into us, since we evolved in small bands in which it was adaptive to be a "communist." But that was 50,000 years ago. Time to move on.

A contemporary example of this phenomenon might be, say, someone who argues that God approves of abortion because he is the author of our freedom and therefore wishes for women to do whatever they want with "their" bodies. Here you can see how a timeless spiritual truth is bent to a demonic end. This happens all the time. To a large extent, the left misuses the value of intellectual freedom -- which can only be rooted in a spiritual perception of its human necessity as a "mirror of truth" -- to undermine the very conditions for the intellect to operate. For example, the problem with political correctness is not just that it enforces error and constrains thought, but that it systematically undermines the very context in which truth can be spoken and heard.

I am often disappointed when I read a work by person of some genuine spiritual attainment, only to have the experience tainted or ruined by their delving into the temporal concerns of the day, in such a way that it makes them look like a dullard or a knave. When this happens, you cannot help thinking to yourself, "how bright could this person be?," or even questioning their spiritual insights. Prior to even thirty years ago, it was common for spiritual writers to embrace some form of Marxism, which ends up making them look like asses, dupes, and useful idiots in hindsight.

But this problem is obviously still endemic to the "new age" and "integral" movements, which can trace their provenance to the counter-cultural movement of the 1950s and '60s, so that to this day they are full of neo-Marxist babble, anti-capitalist rhetoric, pacifism, anti-Americanism, environmental hysteria, liberation theology, internationalism instead of patriotism, "sexual liberation," and the radical feminist and homosexual agendas. None of this has anything to do with prolonging the vertical into the horizontal; rather, it attempts to reduce the vertical to a narrow horizontal political agenda which is based on power, narcissism, and metaphysical ignorance, and is necessarily anti-human.

In the American Thinker piece, Taylor writes that "Every Black American is either Washington or Dr. DuBois. He either aspires to self-reliance, or feeds off white guilt. He either proactively affirms himself, or he perpetually reacts against his imagined white master."

As we have noted before, "left" and "right" are not complementarities but opposites, in that classical liberalism is essentially true, while leftism is essentially false. Likewise, as Taylor writes, "Washington's philosophy of self-reliance and Dr. DuBois' sophisticated resentment are contradictions, not contraries. One is true and the other is false. For the modes of existence available to Black America -- self-help or protest -- are not mutually inclusive, like yin or yang. Black existential choice comes down to Washington or Dr. DuBois."

In Washington's case, he "established the prototype for modern Black civilization. His school encouraged enterprise and industry.... He understood that property rights, to wit 'life, liberty and property,' are the soul of citizenship; that protection of property is the US government's basic purpose. He designed his educational system and economic policy to build a nation within a nation of property-owners."

Conversely, DuBois "dismissed Washington's emphasis on property rights as a sellout. He libeled the Black capitalist as an 'Uncle Tom.'" DuBois discarded capitalist enterprise "in favor of protest." DuBois's followers "resent their liberal white masters. But they most passionately hate the Black who would master the universe. They exemplify the crabs that Washington once described, jealously combining to pull back into the barrel the one crab that would climb out." As such, a great man such as Clarence Thomas is despised by these people, while they simply ignore a man of genius such as Thomas Sowell.

Anyway, when I discuss politics, I try to do so by relying upon intrinsically true cosmic principles that can have no expiration date. One such principle -- from which all other political principles must flow -- is that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Once you reject this principle, all kinds of political mischief follow.

I'd better stop now. Need to get some work done.

The Man can't stop us on the road to freedom: