The Clare Spark Blog

July 19, 2019

Is “America” racist?

LibertarianRepubllic.com

Is “America” racist? I have already written about “the Squad” and their mistaken women of color meme, here: https://clarespark.com/2019/07/15/the-women-of-color-meme-is-bogus/.

Since the liberal media won’t let go of “the Squad’s” antics, another blog is merited; this one is about their claim that “America” is racist. But is “America” racist? “America” is a collectivist category; we do better to emphasize individuals.

What is “racism”? The belief that  mental, and moral characteristics are inherited and confer mental or moral superiority. Physical characters are indeed inherited, but mental and moral characteristics are not.

Upon reflection, In our history men did indeed remove and kill Indians, fight Mexicans for the Southwest, and exclude and exploit Chinese and other workers, inter Japanese during WWII, enslave blacks….but that was in the past.

 Antisemitism (a separate category from racism) was fierce after WWI and WWI and is still present in many persons, some unconsciously. But that does not mean that racism is utterly vanquished;  that does not mean that ”America” is racist, though some persons clearly are. Jews are definitely not a race.

The accusation that “America” is racist (and ecocidal), is part of the hard Left’s repertoire, and now, it appears that moderates and social democrats are picking it up. Just read the Wall Street Journal and watch Fox News Channel. 

Again, I ask, are we fascists yet?

August 17, 2018

H.G. Wells as moderate man

H.G. Wells Getty Images I had not read any of H. G. Wells’ fiction; but I did slog through his massive compendium of earth’s history (The Outline of History) but without the footnotes prominent in prior editions), though he was never a trained historian. He was not strictly a member of the counter-culture, for he was all in for science and technology (industrial progress), which would ostensibly culminate in the only slaves being machines, and liberating the (enslaved) masses from the rule of money (i.e., Jewish power). Here is Wikipedia’s sympathetic partial summary of his 1200 page much corrected work, initially completed in one year, in reaction to the horrifying mass death inflicted, Wells wrote, by (aristocratic) Great Powers. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outline_of_History.

Wells started his synoptic book in 1919 (during a year of upheaval), but this edition was completed after WW2. However, Wells shockingly omitted the Nazi murder of European Jewry, a disaster not in Wells’s comprehensive chronology nor was it mentioned in Wikipedia, perhaps because such events did not jibe with the Wells assault on cultural and racial superiority, lauded by Wiki and affirming the moderate men. (His preference for male heroes and anti-heroes such as Alexander the Great, Napoleon (predecessors to “insane” Hitler?) was mentioned by Wiki.

Since I have focused many blogs on multiculturalism, antisemitism and the waywardness of 18th Century Protestant theologian J.G. von Herder’s influence, which culminated in “cultural anthropology,” race, “roots” environmentalism national character: result, antisemitism and Christian Socialism (one 19th Century precedent of Fabian Socialism, also omitted by Wikipedia).
Nor did Wiki see that American greatness contradicted by a Wellsian emphasis on globalism and its constantly reiterated wish for “peace.” Toward the end of peace was his obvious preference for the Muslim and Buddhist religions. His Christian Socialism was also hinted as he regarded Jesus as a revolutionary who opposed the rich.

Surprisingly, and unlike the popular books by the anti-imperialist, somewhat Wilsonian Charles and Mary Beard (1927), Wells expressed positive views of American promise (like Marx who lauded the American Civil War as a bourgeois revolution), but Wells did attack Stalinism, omitting however, antisemitism in Marx (who also railed against the rule of money as “the universal pimp.”)

So what are left with? Wells was a precursor of the counter-culture, notwithstanding his enthusiasm for machines who would presumably release the masses from toil. But first, the masses would take charge of the machines. And, being a Fabian Socialist, Wells was apparently the father of the Peace Studies movement, the father of other moderate men (the “socially responsible capitalists” of the Democratic Party) and of left-leaning Pacifica radio.

H.G. Wells as moderate man

I had not read any of H. G. Wells’ fiction; but I did slog through his massive compendium of earth’s history (The Outline of History) but without the footnotes prominent in prior editions), though he was never a trained historian. He was not strictly a member of the counter-culture, for he was all for science and technology (industrial progress), which would ostensibly culminate in the only slaves being machines, and liberating the (enslaved) masses from the rule of money (i.e., Jewish power).
Here is Wikipedia’s sympathetic summary of his 1200 page culminating work, initially completed in one year, in reaction to the horrifying mass death inflicted by aristocratic Great Powers. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outline_of_History.

Wells started his synoptic book in 1919 (during a year of upheaval), but this edition was completed after WW2. However, Wells shockingly omitted the Nazi murder of European Jewry, a disaster not in Wells’s comprehensive chronology nor was it mentioned in Wikipedia, perhaps because such events did not jibe with the Wells assault on cultural and racial superiority, lauded by Wiki and affirming the moderate men. (His preference for male heroes and anti-heroes such as Alexander the Great, Napoleon (predecessors to “insane” Hitler?) was mentioned by Wiki.

Since I have focused many blogs on multiculturalism, antisemitism and the waywardness of 18th Century Protestant theologian J.G. von Herder’s influence, which culminated in “cultural anthropology,” race, “roots,” environmentalism, and national character: result, antisemitism and Christian Socialism (one 19th Century precedent of Fabian Socialism, also omitted by Wikipedia).
Nor did Wiki see that American greatness contradicted by a Wellsian emphasis on globalism and its constantly reiterated wish for “peace.” Toward the end of peace was his obvious preference for the Muslim and Buddhist religions. His Christian Socialism was also hinted as he regarded Jesus as a revolutionary who opposed the rich.

Surprisingly, and unlike the popular volumes by the anti-imperialist, somewhat Wilsonian, Charles and Mary Beard (1927), Wells expressed positive views of American promise (Wells,like Marx,lauded the American Civil War as a bourgeois revolution), but Wells did attack Stalinism, omitting however, antisemitism in Marx (who also railed against the rule of money as “the universal pimp.”)

So what are left with? Wells was a precursor of the counter-culture, notwithstanding his enthusiasm for machines which would presumably release the masses from toil. And, being a Fabian Socialist, Wells was apparently the father of the Peace Studies movement, the father of other moderate men (the “socially responsible capitalists” of the Democratic Party) and of left-leaning Pacifica radio.

June 15, 2018

Wilsonian “democracy” is alive and well, maybe

I don’t blame my FB friends (or others) for blurring the boundary between factions of “the Left.” Rereading the Beards’ popular volumes (no footnotes!) on THE RISE OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION (1927), I can’t tell if the authors are “moderate”/“Wilsonian democrats” as they claim, or revolutionary socialists, for they did get their works published and may have been slipping their more heartfelt convictions through censorship in the book market. Nevertheless, in their enthusiasm for labor unions, anti-imperialism, and secularism, I see the Beards as close to today’s social justice democrats. (Although the Beards did not live to see the climate change debates, as sort of Jeffersonian agrarians, they were anti-machine (industrialism), like today’s counter-culture, opposed to the standardization of technology (mass media!) and the concomitant creation of a national market–not a local one) Indeed, I wonder if the Beards proclivity for collectivist discourses stems from the notion that standardization affects human beings to the point where we are all the same?

But what this blog is about is the resemblance of the Beards’ work and the current Democratic Party (and even the “progressive” faction in the Republican Party), especially since the emphases conferred by the New Left that picked up steam in the 1960s (emphasizing “race,” “gender,” and “ecology,” over class struggle as the outcome of the civil rights, feminist, and environmental movements).

For instance,1. identity politics (class, race, and gender determine political allegiance/leanings), 2. anti-capitalism/anti-imperialism, 3. animus toward “the idle rich”/the Gilded Age/ initially brought by crypto-Jew Alexander Hamilton (a.k.a. “the money power”), 4. class struggle between <em>soi-disant aristocrats (industrialists) vs. farmers and laborers, 5. white supremacy/racism (“Anglo-Saxons” are imperialists, 6. diversity/inclusion as a form of reparations for ongoing domination), 7. Poorly masked antisemitism and secularism, 8. Labor unions 9. Union achieved through a balance of power, compassion/love, and compromise. (For the latter see https://clarespark.com/2010/11/06/moderate-men-falling-down/ and much else on my website). The “moderate men” on both “Left” and “Right,” are appalled by the current polarization, as if we had never been divided since Columbus set foot on the soil of the Western Hemisphere.

Are we not ever looking for UNITY? (See https://clarespark.com/2013/10/26/krauthammer-fox-news-channel-and-the-search-for-unity/. I suspect that the most avid searchers are seeking inner peace, through the reconciliation of opposites.)

February 13, 2018

Shylock and antisemitism

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 5:50 pm
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I have a new insight on antisemitism (https://clarespark.com/2013/05/11/index-to-blogs-on-antisemitism-2/) that also illuminates what passes for liberalism today: If you read THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, the contrast between the evil Shylock and the “rational” Christians is drawn out. What Shylock stands for is legality and contract (i.e., the honoring of civil obligations, like most of today’s conservatives standing up for lawn and order and supporting Israel).

The Christians (Antonio, Bassanio and Portia) are all about mercy and forgiveness, looking backwards to Judaism that stressed compassion (love/mercy/not holding grudges) and forgiveness, but foreshadowing the Christian appropriation of Judaism in the forms of Christian Socialism and social democracy. (See https://clarespark.com/2012/10/07/christian-socialism-as-precursor-to-orwell/; https://clarespark.com/2011/07/16/disraelis-contribution-to-social-democracy/)

Shakespeare’s play regarding Shylock is starkly controversial, but the contrast Shakespeare suggested and that (Christian) Shakespeare scholar David Bevington drew out for me between liberals and conservatives is rarely drawn.

Have we not gotten beyond late medieval England?

October 10, 2017

Harvey Weinstein as “carnal Jew”

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 8:05 pm
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Weinstein and wife Georgina Chapman (Getty images)

Although “couch casting” is notorious in Hollywood, the conservative (and moderate) press is highlighting the misdeeds of an “A-list” producer, Harvey Weinstein, as if he was uniquely culpable for assailing the innocence of would-be actresses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Weinstein.

I have yet to see an article on the general subject of this notorious miscreant that tackles the questions of antisemitic stereotypes or of any upwardly mobile female as she climbs the ladder of “success.” See this stimulating article that, however, misses the two
stereotypes: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n21/lucy-prebble/short-cuts?utm_source=LRB+icymi&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20171104+icymi&utm_content=usca_nonsubs

I have now seen the popular movie musical La La Land and will have a few words to say about the appeal of Emma Stone, in addition to tackling the Harvey Weinstein affair.

First, the carnal Jew stereotype, taken up (implicitly) here: “No European myth is benign or even neutral with regard to Jews or to the liberal values that Sharf wants to defend, nor can it be otherwise. All Jews, including the “eternal” ones, are “bad”; the antithesis of Christian and Jew corresponds to the antipodes of “organic conservatism” and classical liberalism: (heartfelt) mysticism and (heartless) science, trust and withering skepticism, loyalty and betrayal, community and mob, busy bee and parasite, garden and wasteland. “Good Jews” like Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, Cumberland’s Sheva, Walker’s Schechem, and Dickens’ Riah who appeared in the humanitarian literature of the late eighteenth and early to mid-nineteenth century were good only because they were more Christian than the bourgeois Christians who were behaving like Shylock and Fagin; capitalism purged of its Judas red-beards would presumably lose its heartless and exploitative character. Christian landlords would never evict a tenant, Christian bankers would never foreclose a mortgage: this demented idea is fundamental to the völkisch revolution of Nazism,[2] but was not their invention. Nazi anti-Semitism, then, was only partly about the considerable material advantages in expropriating Jewish property and expelling Jewish rivals: Nazis, to maintain their credibility as redeemers and protectors, would have to plunge a stake in the heart of the “demon Thought” (to use Byron’s expression). For the antifascist critical mind is not found in a guilt-ridden Adam shrinking from conflict with illegitimate authority or from the perception of other irreconcilable conflicts. Instead, the anti-Semitic/ anti-intellectual mind anxiously mystifies structural antagonisms by positing (an unattainable) harmony as “normal.” Brandishing images of solidarity, the fascist bonds people only to “romance” in a false utopia necessarily maintained through deceit, terror and catharsis.” (See source and discussion here: https://clarespark.com/2010/08/15/nazis-exhibit-der-ewige-jude-1937/.)

One of my better insights has been to identify sexuality partly with the search for knowledge and discovery anxiety (“forbidden fruit”). It is ironic that liberal producer Weinstein is associated with movies that make more demands on mass audiences than the usual Hollywood fare; yet he is being reviled as an overweight goat, and worse, as a super-rich “greasy” liberal (grinding the face of the poor?) and, is put in the same box with disgraced Roman Polanski. See http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268088/why-media-covered-harvey-weinstein-daniel-greenfield. But see https://clarespark.com/2009/10/02/roman-polanski-and-his-critics/ for more on the carnal Jew stereotype.

II. I have been complaining about liberal feminism for years, noting that the more forceful arguments on women’s rights have been weakened by many pundits. Commentators might note the much-criticized hyper-sexuality advanced by advertising and all mass media. What is not usually limned, however, is the kind of sexuality practiced by pedophiles—namely the search for innocence of the kind sported by infants and youngsters.

Now think of the younger stars, Emma Stone, for instance. Yes, there are numerous femmes fatales that are heavily made up. But “the most highly paid actress in Hollywood” (Forbes) has big blue eyes and small breasts. And the successful movie, La La Land, that made Emma Stone super-popular, was noticeably sexless and dumbed down in its dialogue.

Emma Stone

September 17, 2017

Fascism and The Big Lie

 Conservative Dinesh D’Souza sums up his new book The Big Lie thus: The Left is Fascist, not the Right as the Left alleges.

What is wrong with D’Souza’s picture?

1. It is true that there is no agreement among scholars about whether or not there is such a thing as “generic fascism,” but historians have created a mountain of scholarship attacking the general notion of “fascism” as a generalized type. I have myself made the distinction between specific forms of “fascism” here, trying perhaps to get out of the muddle by making autodidacts empowered by the printing press the underlying target of authoritarian wrath. (See https://clarespark.com/2013/04/21/fascism-what-it-is-what-it-is-not/.) My opinion: D’Souza is throwing around dated concepts he doesn’t understand; 1930s Pop Front/New Deal liberals accused their conservative opponents of “fascism,” while some liberals returned the favor by smearing the New Left with the same moniker (and with respect to the New Left mystification of class relations, the liberals were accurate).

2. D’Souza has misappropriated the notion of the ‘Big Lie” as propagated by Hitler in Mein Kampf. Hitler was blaming the Allies (specifically Britain) for war propaganda and above all “the Jews” for being bad fathers to the German Volk. (See https://clarespark.com/2014/01/16/hitler-and-the-big-lie-corrected/.) In other words, a sharply divided Germany could be united without the analysis provided by (evil, materialist) Jewish Bolshevists (the Communists). In this, I agree with the Left that fascism was a counter-revolution. I would add that “fascism” is continuous with the Counter-Reformation and even (Protestant) organic conservatism (https://clarespark.com/2015/01/23/what-is-an-organic-conservative/.)

3. Scholars are at odds over the relationship of social democracy and Nazism. Some of my (conservative) FB friends have pointed out some structural similarities between “the planning state” and Hitler’s regime. I countered with the notion of Hitler’s “Fuehrer principle” that overrode inevitable divisions among Nazi bureaucrats. (With this point, I agree with some anticommunist social psychologists. See https://clarespark.com/2011/03/27/progressive-mind-managers-ca-1941-42/. The social psychologists were tools of the New Deal, however, and partook of their authoritarian irrationalism and snobbery regarding the masses who were not “trained to rule.”)

4. I still do not know how to answer the question I posed at Pacifica radio (KPFK-FM) in Los Angeles in the late 1980s-90s: “How Do We Know When We  Are Not Fascists?” The much vaunted notion of “free speech” is, in my view, a ploy by “antifascists” to legitimate the Democratic Party and the forces against “political correctness.” No one has solved the problem of authoritarianism, that can be either subtle or direct. I continue to puzzle over this baffling ambiguity.

That is the tortuous path that I, as a freethinker, tread. D’Souza would have done well to read https://clarespark.com/2014/12/10/were-nazis-socialists/.

August 3, 2017

Getting my goat

Two “liberals” appearing to “balance” Tucker Carlson on Fox News have prompted this irate blog. One is Canadian born and trained Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, now a University Professor at (liberal) Northeastern University, the other is Minnesotan Ethan Bearman, a Bay Area up and coming talk show host.

Dr. Barrett avers that potential speakers must promote “debate,” but not indulge in “hate speech,” while Bearman stated that “historically disadvantaged groups should get preferential treatment.” (That means that if your ancestors were “oppressed,” quota systems are okay, even if they discriminate against “white people,” Jews, and Asians.)

Neither guests emphasized the search for truth, for they echo the allegations of postmodernists/liberals. Discarding the search for (empirical) truth, signifies the ever-more pervasive lack of standards, and opens the door to the less obvious forms of racism, and the acquiescence to pseudo-moderation and the collectivist discourses/groupiness imposed by Big Government.

Which brings me to the “populism” admired by Fox News Channel. It is no accident that the American populists (identified by FNC with the President), were antisemitic (in their rage against all banks), but the current avatars of populism pretend to speak for “the People” against “elites.” I understand that many populists today resent Big Government, but it pretends to be a meritocracy that establishes “standards” of truth/rationality, creditworthiness, and of correct grammar and style, but it is not.

Whereas progressives like Barrett and Bearman embrace the collectivist discourses of the Left, disallowing individualistic (?) merit. Thus Dr. Barrett ignores the (hyper-individualistic) search for truth that may silence her version of debate, while Bearman in his present-minded zeal to repair the policies of the past, promotes one type of reparations.

I thought that  David Horowitz tried to discredit the “reparations” tactic years ago, for which he has gotten much grief from the Left (and more indirectly by epigeneticists and “Ancestry”-type websites).

December 12, 2015

The State of the Blog (3)

zombies-historyPeriodically, I report to my readers how the blog is doing, especially in contrast with competing media that also want your eyeballs. I have noticed that the term “blog” is usually derisive, for there are millions of bloggers competing with academics and journalists, while many of the bloggers, unlike professors and writers for the major websites, lack the institutional legitimacy that makes them trustworthy.

The most important point in this blog is as follows: there is nothing I put up on the Yankee Doodle Society website that is in any way different than a paper I would present to fellow academics, or an article that I would submit to an academic publisher. Whether footnotes appear or not, they are always in my head; this does not imply that I am entirely objective, for we are all limited by life experience, preferred ideology, and our access to, and interest in, primary source materials.

Why is the blog, though relatively popular, not even more widely seen? Because “moderation” is hegemonic and my blogs have traced the mostly invisible rise of the moderate men. The New Left and the Frankfurt Institute refugees (the critical theorists) did not invent or advance the turn to culturalism in the 1930s, in tandem with the New Deal assault upon freedom and its attendant laissez-faire capitalism and so-called American “imperialism.” See for example, Barton Swaim’s WSJ review of a reissued book by Roger Scruton’s Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands, that ostensibly reveals the illegitimate domination of New Leftists and critical theorists–including Gramsci, their supposed inspiration– in the academy. What Swaim leaves out (besides the social psychologists affiliated with FDR) is the introduction of multiculturalism in the early 20th century by those intellectuals who would blot out the red specter of proletarian internationalism in favor of the “progressive” internationalism of Woodrow Wilson.  And Woodrow Wilson is currently being rehabilitated by fellow corporatist liberals, despite his well-known racism.

(For the New Deal turn to cultural history at the expense of “economic determinism” and science, see https://clarespark.com/2009/12/12/switching-the-enlightenment-corporatist-liberalism-and-the-revision-of-american-history/.)

We find ourselves in the early stages of an election campaign for the American presidency, horribly distracted by terrorism in France and San Bernardino, while the media establishment has kittens over the popularity of businessman and populist outsider Donald J. Trump. Currently, I am reading Milton Friedman’s popular book Capitalism and Freedom (1962), for I have exhausted myself in writing about what I already studied in graduate school and in the years following: the Melville Revival, the chief actors in the rise of cultural history and modern social psychology, the many faces of antisemitism, the founding of Israel, ongoing resistance to modernity, the various forms of fascism, and psychological warfare in general.

Stay tuned, as I find points of agreement and disagreement with the “Chicago school” of economics, and whether or not there exists a decisive international population of “moderate Muslims” who will arouse themselves to brake the (“Islamist”) jihadists among them.

December 9, 2015

The “diversity” argument

Filed under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 6:04 pm
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diversityFirst read this: http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/12/supreme-court-preview-will-affirmative-action-survive/.

This blog considers the mistaken view of “diversity” that is virtually hegemonic in our society, thanks to the “moderate” strategy that prefers “social cohesion” over individual intellectual and emotional development to achieve some semblance of “authenticity.” (My focus is on “racial” diversity.)

At stake are contending views of “fairness” shaped by cultural nationalist threats during the late 1960s, to which liberals, leftists, and “moderate conservatives” simply caved, even though they should have known better. (For “moderate conservative” attitudes consider such outposts of mild dissent as Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal.)

The current case before the Supreme Court deals with the “diversity” or “affirmative action” policies that have almost erased prior notions of scholarship: i.e.,  that competition, not racial, gender, or sexual preference bean counting, would be the criterion to be protected in college admissions.

By the time that students are in the application process for college entrance, it is simply too late to compensate for parental neglect/anti-intellectualism/indifference in the early years, including childhood, elementary school, and high school. But in the interest of “social peace” liberals (ever attuned to teacher unions and their versions of child psychology) have made the argument that “racial” diversity is indispensable to a proper education.

Forget the fact that the Left once opposed the very notion of “race”; those days are gone forever. What is surprising is that so many “moderates” fail to support scholastic achievement against the assumptions of multiculturalism—that ethnicity (or “race”) should be “balanced” in the interest of their versions of “social justice.” Need I remind the reader that multiculturalism depends on views of “national character” that should have been discredited after two world wars, but were not? See https://clarespark.com/2014/07/20/national-character-does-it-exist/.

Hence the claims of [inherently oppressive] “white supremacy” are out of bounds in our universities. The aim of good liberals and many hard leftists is clearly the supremacy of “persons of color,” following, they say, demographic changes in the [uncontrollable] big cities. Such feckless pandering should be beneath ostensibly deep thinkers, but is not.

That it is obviously racist to enforce different intellectual criteria for college entrance, depending on “race,” should be obvious. Can the US remain competitive in such a dumbed-down society?

Similar quotas were common in the 1920s and 1930s, directed then against [over-represented] Jews, whose religion upholds scholarship above all other values. We can see how well that turned out.

RanbowHanukkaMenorah

 

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