Sunday, March 20, 2005

Shallow universalism

Here's an odd, but interesting, item. Robert Lindsay is a left-wing blogger from California. As you'd expect of any kind of liberal, he doesn't like ethnic nationalism or tribalism. In a recent thread at Majority Rights, he began by clearly announcing,

I have no interest in being ethnocentric towards my race - white Europeans ... I don't care about my race, nor even like it very much ... I'm the original race traitor ... this is one of my main beefs against Jews - they are the most anti-universalist people on Earth.

It's all just primitive caveman stuff to me .. Fetishing race is erecting barriers between humans where none should exist! It's promoting differences that are so petty it's laughable ... In fact, I hate racialism and tribalism so much that I want to see the races (at least here in the US) thoroughly mixed. If there are differences, then we should mix everyone up enough to even everyone out. At some point there won't be much race left as everyone will be mongrelized and all of the measurable racial differences will also fade away."


As I said, this is standard liberal fare. What's interesting, though, is that Robert Lindsay stayed to respond to criticism of his views from the Majority Rights regulars. In doing so he confirmed some of the suspicions that we conservatives have about liberals.

For instance, one reader argued that because Robert Lindsay felt no love for his own ethnic group, he had filled up the hole with a liberal universalism. Lindsay countered by admitting that his earlier statement, about not liking his own race, wasn't true. He confessed,

Ahh but I lie. Sheepishly. I am embarassed to admit, that of course I have some ethnocentrism but it is well buried and denied. As I'm aware of my psych defences, unlike most, I can see it's being denied. I like the way I look - I am white. I am, at times, proud of my people and of course proud of my ancestry. I feel a kinship with whites.


So there! Even liberals like Robert Lindsay feel, at times, the same love of ancestry and ethnicity as conservatives, but unlike us they deny and bury these feelings. In other words, Lindsay is being honest enough to admit that "ethnocentrism" really is a part of human nature, but, as a liberal, it's a natural part of human identity which he wants to overcome. The way Lindsay himself puts it is that,

We are Leftists, we are out to socially engineer the species away from its caveman tendencies ... Leftism [is] about getting humans to transcend their base natures through brainwashing, shaming and praise.


(Of course, conservatives would deny that love of ethnic tradition is a base part of human nature.)

Finally, Lindsay admits at the end that despite his claims that all people are the same and that different races should be mixed up, that he himself chooses to live in the one part of California which is still solidly white, and that he wouldn't live in a nearby racially mixed city. He writes,

White flight, well, I am an example of that I guess. I live in the California mountains, the last redoubt of whites in this state. It's basically all white ... There is a large city near me full of Hispanics, SE Asian immigrants, Blacks and East Indians. Whites are now a minority in that town. There are certain districts of that town I would not live in.


Well, at least Robert Lindsay is one liberal who is honest and open in his hypocrisy. He is a "universalist" as a matter of principle, but in his own heart he feels a natural sense of ethnic connectedness, and, most revealingly, when it comes to the practical, everyday matter of finding somewhere to settle, he reveals a preference for living among his own people.

Doesn't this say something about the shallowness of liberal universalism?

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