Tuesday, December 03, 2002

I just noticed Scoobie Davis had a post awhile back about my new pet projects - Jared Taylor and American Renaissance magazine.

In my comments section, Jay Reding said:


The paleocons are (thankfully) a dying breed. The GOP won because they took their message to the center. Trying to lump these nutballs in with the current conservative movement is like trying to say that the Shining Path is representative of contemporary liberalism.


Not sure he's correct, but I do appreciate his condemnation.

Anyway, check out this lovely Freeper commenting on an article by Derrick Jackson.

Jackson says:


In profiles, Rice talks about being hollered at as a child by a white store clerk for touching a hat. Rice's mother told the clerk ''Don't you talk to my daughter that way!'' Her mother then said, ''Now, Condoleezza, you go and touch every hat in this store.''

That reminded me of around 1965 when I was about 10. I bought comic books and ice cream in a drug store in DeKalb, Miss. Later, my grandfather informed me that was the ''white folks'' drug store. He could have berated me for breaking white folks' rules. Instead, he smiled and said, ''Good.''


Freeper says:


In some small towns and rural areas, much informal segregation remained after 1964. But Jackson's anecdote doesn't demonstrate that he was the victim of segregation. No one at "the white folks drug store" prevented Jackson from entering the store and making a purchase. Perhaps the store was locally known as "the white folks" store, but contrary to the idea of Jackson's grandfather, this did not mean the store was unwilling to sell to blacks.

I am disturbed however, by Jackson's idea that "breaking white folks' rules" was somehow inherently just. Did not the white folks of DeKalb, Miss., also have laws against murder, rape, robbery? If rules were to be broken merely because they were work of white folks, then hasn't Jackson gone a long way toward explaining the explosion of black criminality that began in the 1960s?

This shows how the civil rights movement, to a great extent, represented a direct assault on tradition and law. It is all well and good for the liberal to say, "Well, some laws and traditions are unjust." But who is to say which laws are unjust? Was it not true that the civil rights revolution was an exercise in pure political power, and that every measure from Brown v. Board to the 1965 Voting Rights Act was merely a function of the national majority imposing its will? If a bare majority is sufficient to strike down the laws of 15 states, and this be called justice, why then should we complain when, in 1973, a 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court declared void the laws of 49 states restricting or prohibiting abortion?


Perhaps Jay could weigh in on that one too. Always nice to hear the other side's perspective.