Sunday, October 4, 2009

Palouse whale sightings, pt. 4: Mixing it up with Moby and his "chum"

Continuing the saga of my online encounter with the intolerant, bigoted mind of Joe Campbell, I answered Ol' Baitbreath here:

The main thrust of my reply was that in today's America, race-baiting and race hustling by people who want to bash whites is a far bigger societal problem than white racism, and I deplored the hypocritical double standards being employed such that racism is virtually by definition a sin that only whites are capable of committing.

In typical Intolerista form, Mr. Campbell simply refused to acknowledge facts that refute his view.

I answered Mr. Campbell and Tom Hansen, another denizen the Vision2020 Pond who had jumped in to help slander with a stupid, baseless comment, as follows --

Joe Campbell wrote:
{{ Sorry for trying to communicate with you. I won't make that mistake again! }}

If you call that diatribe an attempt at communication, It explains a lot. Anytime you are interested in RATIONAL DISCOURSE, just let me know. Next time you might want to focus less on "communicating" and more on writing something that rises to the level of an argument.

Tom Hansen wrote:
{{ Apparently what [he] is trying to say is that it isn't racism if you don't use the N-word. And to paraphrase a supreme court justice . . . "I may not be able to define 'racism', but I know it when I hear it, read it, or smell it." }}

Tell us what racism is, Tom. My Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language (1930), despite being large and certainly one of the most authoritative dictionaries of the English language at that time, does not even include the words "racism" and "racist." That's right, the words weren't even in the dictionary as of 1930, despite the fact that today the label "racist" is apparently one of the worst things that can be applied to someone. Today if you label someone a racist you apparently gain the right to look down on that person in scorn, dismissing not only everything that he might have to say, but even dismissing him personally as a human being. And yet, when our parents were children, the word didn't even exist, at least not such that it would qualify for a spot in the dictionary.

Go check out the Wikipedia article on racism.

There are so many competing and conflicting ideas of what exactly constitutes this greatest and most heinous of crimes that it is pretty ridiculous.

I am NOT convinced that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities, and NOT convinced that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. I am NOT convinced that any one ethnic or racial group is particularly loved or hated by God on account of their physical attributes, and NOT convinced that racial integration is against God's will. I AM married to a person of another race and I would not be surprised if it turned out that I have had far more close contact with poor black people in the United States than anyone criticizing me here has -- since I was actually living under the same roof with some of them prior to leaving the United States -- and yet somehow I'm a "racist."

I'll tell you why I'm a "racist." First of all, I actually have an open mind and am not afraid to give politically incorrect ideas a HEARING. (As opposed to embracing them, mind you -- God gave me a mind and I intend to use it to think for myself.) Second, I do not suffer fools (such as you) gladly. I don't hesitate to point out the hypocrisies and inconsistencies rife throughout the thinking of people who seem to have given up thinking altogether, perhaps because they harbor a fear of being seen as politically incorrect. Pointing out such hypocrisies and inconsistencies is not difficult in today's world. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Something is very wrong when an entire society can be gripped by a nebulous fear and loathing of something that they can't even define, and which just a generation ago did not even exist in the public consciousness. George Orwell had a term for this sort of phenomenon; he called it the "Two-Minute Hate."


I'm well aware that it is often "racists" who are accused of living in such a world, but I think a strong case can be made that people ready to hurl accusations of "racism" at the drop of a hat are no less victims of that very hate-filled mentality. "Who are they?" asks the video. "They" are the racists, apparently. Shout and scream at the screen all you like, Tom. I don't care.

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