{"id":6107,"date":"2016-10-26T06:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T06:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/10\/26\/justice-thomas-so-politically-incorrect-that-he-may-not-even-be-black\/"},"modified":"2016-10-26T06:00:48","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T06:00:48","slug":"justice-thomas-so-politically-incorrect-that-he-may-not-even-be-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/10\/26\/justice-thomas-so-politically-incorrect-that-he-may-not-even-be-black\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Thomas: “. . . so politically incorrect that he may not even be black.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edward J. Erler, Last Chance to Defeat Political Correctness?<\/a> Excerpt (exphasis added):<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

. . . Progressive Liberals have viciously criticized Justice Clarence Thomas for refusing to represent his racial class on the Supreme Court. He sees his duty, instead, as following the rule of law and the Constitution. When the law classifies on the basis of race or attempts to promote racial class interests, he has written many times, it undermines the rule of law by violating the crucial principal that all<\/em> persons are equal before the law. Progressive Liberals despise Thomas for arguing that \u201cbenign\u201d racial classifications to benefit racial classes or groups are morally equivalent to invidious racial classifications designed to harm or disadvantage racial or ethnic groups. Race, an arbitrary, inessential feature of the human persona, has no role to play in the rule of law. Since rights belong to individuals, Thomas correctly insists, they are not conditioned by the racial class an individual happens to occupy.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Justice Thomas is so politically incorrect that he may not even be black. (We \u201ccannot tell every story,\u201d says<\/a> the Smithsonian Institution about Thomas\u2019s absence from the new National Museum of African American History and Culture.) If race is as much a political fact as a biological one, then the failure or refusal to promote a group\u2019s interests and identity nullifies membership in that group. Conversely, Bill Clinton was acclaimed<\/a> America\u2019s first black president.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The vicious insanity of  contemporary liberals is truly mind-boggling.  But that's nothing new.  What may be worth pointing out, however, is that the bolded passage, with which I fully agree, is contested not only by leftists but also by alt-rightists and neo-reactionaries.   <\/span><\/p>\n

Both groups, while otherwise at each other's throats, jump into the same bed when it comes to the importance of 'blood.'  Both groups favor an identity politics in which race is an essential determinant of one's very identity.  I have a post<\/a> (56 comments) in which I lament the tribal identification of so many blacks and in which I recommend getting beyond tribal identifications.  But certain 'alties' or NRs would have none of it: they think that the right response to black tribalism is white tribalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

In another post I cited the Declaration's "all men are created equal," which elicited from an NR the riposte that it is false!  The response displayed a failure to grasp that the famous declaration in the Declaration is not an empirical claim about the properties and powers of human animals whether as individuals or as groups, but a normative claim about persons as rights-possessors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some good points are made by some on the Alternative Right.  But their response to the insane extremism of the Left is — wait for it — a reaction<\/em> that is also extreme, though not  insane.  Trads and the alties share some common ground, so dialogue is possible; but self-enstupidated leftists are beyond the pale of dialogue.  They are enemies that have to be defeated, not fellow rational beings with whom it would make sense to have a conversation.  One hopes that their defeat can be achieved politically; but extrapolitical means remain 'on the table.'<\/span><\/p>\n

A lot rides on the concept of person when it comes to differentiating a tenable conservatism from the reactionary particularism of  the Alt Right.  A separate post will sketch a personalist conservatism.  <\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Jim Ryan's Self-Evident Truths of Social and Political Philosophy<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edward J. Erler, Last Chance to Defeat Political Correctness? Excerpt (exphasis added): . . . Progressive Liberals have viciously criticized Justice Clarence Thomas for refusing to represent his racial class on the Supreme Court. He sees his duty, instead, as following the rule of law and the Constitution. When the law classifies on the basis of … Continue reading “Justice Thomas: “. . . so politically incorrect that he may not even be black.””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[600,64,163,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alternative-right","category-conservatism","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","category-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}