Joe Biden and Friedrich Nietzsche
American Greatness,
by
Roger Kimball
Original Article
Posted By: earlybird,
6/21/2020 4:36:18 PM
According to Joe Biden, the basement candidate for president, ending “systemic racism” in the United States is “the moral obligation of our time.”
Too late, Joe! Systemic racism in the United States ended with the Union victory in the Civil War. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. On June 19 of that year, Union General Gordon Granger announced in Galveston, Texas, that all slaves in the state were free—Texas being that last state to comply with the Emancipation Proclamation. That is the date that the latest Kwanzaa-like manufactured racialist holiday, “Juneteenth,” is intended to celebrate and that Joe’s minders intended to capitalize on by writing “Juneteenth: A
Reply 1 - Posted by:
earlybird 6/21/2020 4:40:01 PM (No. 452126)
FTA:
The institution of slavery, which ended nearly 150 years ago, has no bearing—zero—on the plight of American blacks today. What does affect them, mightily, is the destruction of the black family, a project brought to us by more than five decades of Democratic welfare policy.
The PR surrounding Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program told the world that its aim was to abolish poverty. It’s actual effect was to institutionalize poverty and promulgate an endless agenda of dependency, which all but guaranteed black subservience to the governmental overlord. It also institutionalized the gigantic network of government workers charged with servicing—and, by extension, perpetuating—the welfare state.
Kimball gets it...
14 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Ida Lou Pino 6/21/2020 4:53:14 PM (No. 452140)
I personally celebrate Diciottissimo - - marking the 18th day of October 1935 - - when the last Italian organ grinder turned in his monkey.
I demand that should be a national holiday!
2 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
earlybird 6/21/2020 5:13:27 PM (No. 452172)
This is such a good article (Kimball is always worth our time). A bit more. Perhaps some will even read the whole thing?
What has not perhaps been appreciated sufficiently is the rancorous psychological dimension of the assiduously cultivated racialist follies roiling America and other Western democracies just now.
For a first glimpse into that story, we might turn to some observations Friedrich Nietzsche made in his 1887 book On the Genealogy of Morals about a certain species of nihilistic self-hatred. “What a display of grand words and postures,” Nietzsche wrote. “What an art of ‘honest’ calumny! . . . [L]et’s admire the skillful counterfeiting with which people here imitate the trademarks of virtue, even its resounding tinkle, the golden sound of virtue.”
4 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
TunnelEffect 6/21/2020 5:13:59 PM (No. 452173)
Interesting how Nietzsche anticipated the SJW phenomenon. That comes later in the article. Along the same vein, Judith Shklar also referred to Nietzsche for the same insights. The essay in Tablet (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/judith-shklar-politics-of-fear) is a must-read for this reason. And a famous quote from C. S. Lewis touches on this as well: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." We've had a bellyful of that.
9 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
rellimpank2 6/21/2020 5:28:13 PM (No. 452185)
--and that notorious rtght wing fanatic, D.Patrick Moynihan (sarc) accurately predicted the effect of the 'Great Society' on the black family--
2 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
davew 6/21/2020 7:20:26 PM (No. 452251)
Nietzsche was a true existentialist who was also virulently anti-Semitic. I'm not sure it was Jewish faith that was his problem but the association of Judaism with the liberalization of European culture and the fact that they were "outsiders" that strongly influenced intellectual institutions. HIs over-the-top polemical style also doomed him to an historic villain especially after he was associated with Hitler and the Nazi "triumph of the will" philosophy. His greatest insight, in my opinion, was his identification of the struggle between majority cultures that defined a "master morality" and minority cultures that gained power by defining "slave morality" that attacked and vilified the virtues defined by the majority. This is the BLM revolution strategy in a nutshell and the assault on our statues and our nation's history as "racist" fits Nietzsche's analysis perfectly.
1 person likes this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Newtsche 6/21/2020 7:21:42 PM (No. 452252)
There's a discussion that should but won't be held on the distinction between racism and racialism.
It would be a start as opposed to the one way avalanche we now see.
1 person likes this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
rytwng 6/21/2020 10:43:55 PM (No. 452376)
Juneteenth is as stupid as Kwanza both made up days.
1 person likes this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
texaspast 6/22/2020 12:11:57 AM (No. 452419)
Got to disagree with you somewhat, #8. Taking Juneteenth nationwide now may be for crass political points (how many of you non-Texans had ever heard of it 5 years ago?), but Juneteenth has been commemorated here in Texas since 1866, mostly by black church congregations, as I understand. When I was a child in the early 1960s, everybody knew what it was, so it is not a recent fantasy-invention like Kwanza.
1 person likes this.
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