Systematic Deracination – Maverick Philosopher

To deracinate is to uproot. W. K. sends this:

That article about political correctness in the universities you linked to reminded me of David Conway's comments in A Defence of the Realm about the 'systematic deracination' of the citizens of western liberal democracies since World War Two:

Through changes in educational curricula, plus other cultural changes, most notably in public broadcasting, the cultural majorities in these societies have been made increasingly unfamiliar with their national histories and traditions. Without adequate historical knowledge of their national histories and without encouragement and opportunity to participate in national traditions, the members of a society cannot be expected to have much understanding of or affection for them.

Solzhenitsyn put this chillingly: 'to destroy a people, you must first sever their roots'. Nothing is more important to remedying this than reclaiming education. Blogs like yours help. I teach English, and I try to do my bit by enunciating the following politically incorrect truths to all my classes. Like the author of the article you linked to, I'm frustrated by 'engagement with political presuppositions often quite peripheral at best — and more often directly opposed — to one’s own scholarly purposes', but the fact that it is necessary is a reminder that the spiritual reality that the scholar defends is vaster, richer and more profound than the narrow intellectual lists where he fights. The advantage of this list is that it frees one up to get on with the more important matter of showing why, for example, Shakespearean tragedy is worth reading. And it prevents one from assenting to falsehoods – to do which is to be complicit in evil.

I doubt you'll learn anything from it, but you might find it interesting anyway; the ones in red are, I think, the most politically incorrect.

The slave trade

The British weren’t the first to practise slavery, but they were the first to abolish it, first at home, then in the colonies, then throughout the world. Be proud of that.

More than three quarters of the captives sold to Europeans were provided by the Africans themselves from raids and war. The African powers remained in control of the slaves as long as the slave trade lasted. They entered into the slave trade entirely of their own accord. There was no opposition to slavery even in principle in black Africa. Western-style abolitionism had no impact: African chiefs sent delegations to the West to protest the abolition of the slave trade because they found it so profitable.

Muslims were the greatest slave traders, enslaving seventeen-million people. There was never a Muslim abolitionist movement. The Koran assumes and accepts slavery.

Marxism

Communists murdered over one-hundred million people in the twentieth century.

Note how the Western intellectuals who criticise capitalist democracies vote with their feet by living in them, tellingly opting not to emigrate to North Korea or a Cuban prison state.

Sexism

Historically, nowhere in the world have women been better treated than in Christian nations. In his Confessions, St. Augustine wrote the first tribute in history to an ordinary woman, his mother, Monica. The Divine Comedy is highest praise of a woman ever. According to Christianity, the Virgin Mary is the greatest human being ever to have lived. Be proud of that.

The accusers during the witch hunts were overwhelmingly women.

One-hundred and fifty years ago, ninety-five percent of men didn't have the vote.

In nineteenth-century England, more novels were published by women than by men. And they wrote under their own names, contrary to the feminist myth that women were obliged to take male names.

Western literature starts with an account of men fighting over a woman. Listen to Achilles: ‘Why must we battle Trojans, men of Argos? Why, why in the world if not for Helen with her loose and lustrous hair?’And Odysseus endures all perils and resists all temptations – even immortality – to get back home to his wife. Medieval chivalric literature also testifies to the fact that women were highly esteemed.

Homosexuality

Plato made sodomy illegal in his Laws.

Poets and orators did not express longings to return to their catamites.

Adult Athenians who acted as catamites were excluded from all offices in public life, not even being permitted to address the assembly.

Dead White Males

Most great literature is written by dead white males. Postmodernists think that’s explained by ‘oppression’ and ‘privilege’, but there are good reasons for it:

Whites have the highest IQ of any race (see the cold-climate theory of IQ).

Men are disproportionately represented at the extremes of intelligence (morons and geniuses): above the IQ level of 170, the genius level, there are thirty timesas many men as women. (Again, there are evolutionary reasons for this.)

Before writers are acknowledged to be great, their work must be subjected to the test of time, which outlasts any individual's lifespan.

Christianity

William E. Lecky, an atheist, makes the following point in his History of European Morals: ‘The vast change in the status of women must be manifest to all after Christianity had superseded the unlimited license of the pagan Empire.’ He mentions:

Christianity's absolute prohibition of sexual indulgence outside marriage

The security of wives by the prohibition of divorce

The legal rights of guardianship of children hitherto reserved to men

The inheritance of widows

"There can be little doubt that reverence for the Virgin Mary has done much to elevate and purify the ideal of woman and soften the manners of men."

The "redeeming and ennobling features of the age of chivalry which no succeeding change of habit or belief has wholly destroyed."

Also:

Christians preached that there was no separate baptism for men and women. All were one in Christ.

Christians did not expose baby girls at birth.

Christians honoured women who defied emperors, centurions and soldiers to witness to the Faith.

Christians were the first to educate women.

Christians were the first to have separate prison cells for men and women.