All Men are Created Equally Racist

As mentioned yesterday, the group -- the interior collective -- shouldn't be thought of as a "location," but rather, a conception. It is only when -- and because -- everyone has the same group conception that we don't see it. It's analogous to, say, an accent. We don't notice our own, so long as we live in a region in which everyone has the same one (although I really don't have one).

Furthermore, it might even be said that the group is a "part" of the individual's functioning, as is, somewhat paradoxically, the "individual." Again, there is always this dynamic complementarity of group <--> individual taking place, out of which our sense of self emerges.

Think of the so-called Palestinians, who claim to want a "state." But they've had a remarkably stable one for 63 years. It is a state of mind that makes them one of the most depraved cultures on the planet, since it is centered around everything that is wrong with human beings: bigotry, hatred, envy, child abuse, misogyny, scapegoating, systematic lying, sacrificial violence, etc.

The Palestinians have exactly the state which they and other Arabs wish them to have. Now they want the world to officially recognize this state of mind by drawing external boundaries around it, presumably on the pretext that this nasty state of cultural mind results from a lack of said boundaries.

Which is more than a little condescending, because for the Palestinians, it is not a nasty, much less dysfunctional, state of mind. After all, doesn't everyone want to exterminate the Jews? The Palestinians believe -- and have every right to do so, given the amount of foreign aid that flows their way -- that "we just have the balls to actually do what everyone else is only thinking."

Hitler felt the same way -- that he was doing the world a huge favor -- at great inconvenience I might add, since genocide can be a messy and thankless job. Look at the poor Turks. Not only does no one thank them for the Armenian genocide, but they have to pretend it never happened. Is the world upside-down?

Ironically, I've been reading Jaffa's classic works on Lincoln, who, at risk of putting words in his mouth, believed that there was only one type of government worth creating and fighting for, since its principles were universal. Any other type of state is just one of the many masks of tyranny, so why should Americans, of all people, grant it any legitimacy? To paraphrase Tolstoy, just governments are all alike; every unjust government is unjust in its own way.

The whole thing reminds me of the words of young Nelson on the Simpsons, whose mother is an alcoholic pole dancer: "I gotta get home. My mom gets upset if she wakes up and no one's there to tell her where she is. Heh.... typical mom."

"I gotta get to the UN and vote on Palestinian statehood. They'll go all intifada on us and start blowing up their kids if we don't give them a state. Heh... typical culture."

Jaffa shows that Lincoln -- his homespun demeanor to the contrary notwithstanding -- spent his life thinking long and hard about just this subject -- almost as if he were being prepared for the messianic (this time in the real sense) task before him, which is to say, a new birth of freedom, only this time truly universal. In one sense, our Fathers (as he always called them) did all of the heavy lifting, so it was only for subsequent generations to transmit it intact to the next.

But everyone knew that there was something at the heart of the matter -- a snake in the garden, a rot at the foundation, a stark internal contradiction -- that threatened to delegitimize the whole noble experiment. For if one man has the intrinsic right to enslave another man, then no man is free, and self-government is a chimera.

Rather, the only consistent principle in which self-rule may be grounded is: all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator -- not by any state, and certainly not any culture -- with certain unalienable rights. This principle cannot be contingent or accidental. Rather, it must be essential, i.e., "self-evident."

And please note that "self-evident" doesn't only pertain to material or efficient causes located in the "past," but to final and ontological causes located both in the future and in the upper vertical.

What I mean by this is that the self-evidence of the proposition only becomes fully clear by virtue of believing and living it. As such, it is very much analogous to faith, which must be similarly lived in order to yield its harvest.

Was that clear? Perhaps not. What it means is that there is a manner in which man was meant to live, and in the absence of which he cannot thrive. It is like saying, "we hold this truth to be self-evident, that babies need maternal love in order to thrive." "But how do you know that? Show me the scientific study that proves there's such a thing as 'love.'"

Well, just see what happens if you deprive the child of this vital substance. He will be alive, but not really. He'll still be human, but only technically, in the sense that he will have been blocked from becoming what he should have. Likewise, it is partly because America was grounded in human truth that it became the most prosperous, powerful, and decent nation in history.

For Lincoln, the above-noted principle embodied in the Declaration is "an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times"; and in order to be secure from those who would deny it, it "must be grounded in a reality that is not itself timebound" (Jaffa). How much political mischief could be avoided if only members of both parties acknowledged this American creed, our "political religion," that was once held sacred by all citizens!

Which brings up a critical point regarding the left's constant refrain that we must seek "compromise," which essentially means that we must not only acknowledge their principles as valid, but respect and ultimately cave into them.

Yes, they are absolutely correct that politics is the art of compromise. But on policies, not on principles. If we cannot agree on the same principles, then compromise is actually impossible.

For example, what is the compromise position between "Israel has a right to exist" and "Israel must be purged of every single Jewish man, woman and child"? What, just exterminate some Jews?

Likewise, what is the compromise position between "all men are created equal" and "some men are created equal," or "all men are somewhat equal," or "the state shall determine who is equal"? Answer: there isn't one. Hence, war.

Just as we have been involved in a war of Jihad for 60 years (great book) without acknowledging it, so too have we been involved in an interior war that is once again striking at the heart of our political religion and tearing us in two. This began in the open latrine of academia, seeped into the streams of the MSM, polluted the groundwater of public education, and now flows from every faucet of culture.

"[I]n our time, historicism and its offspring nihilism have continued to dominate the blind mice of academic discourse." That is to say, "in denying the possibility of moral and political principles that transcend time, historicism denies the possibility of rational judgment of men and events within historic time" (Jaffa).

Do you see why? Because there is no objective standard with which to judge. Who are you to say that Israeli culture is superior to Arab culture? What, are you a racist?

Truly, we are well past the point of absurdity when to affirm that "all men are created equal" is to admit to racism.