Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Vox Popoli: Inquiry from a black conservative (Intelligent insight by Vox Day - and be sure to read the comments at Vox Popoli! - CL)


Or at least, what used to be considered a black conservative before conservatism died its final death yesterday at the Supreme Court:
I am subscribed to your youtube account and I've been on your blog site occasionally. But honestly I became aware of you through other people or movements (Owen, Milo, comicsgate, the aftermath of the 2016 election, etc etc) When I occasionally read your blog posts or watched a darkstream specifically about or involving the aforementioned groups of people, I would be inclined to agree with your position. Now by chance I watched your latest darkstream  "Conservatism is dead" because I also thought that morning when the supreme court ruling came down that conservatism was dead. I would be considered a black consertive by some though I am a registered liberterian because of neocons.

I felt pessimistic about the future and so the title for your video really caught my attention. Now as you can probably tell from the subject of this email, the topic of that video isn't specifically what I want to talk about. When you go to the point of conservatives lying about race I admit I raised an eyebrow, I could understand an argument regarding lying about culture but race made me wince. To be honest I didn't get I guess you could say triggered until you started to argue from a Biblical standpoint. I was tempted to think alright this guy is just an ass just unsubscribe, but I wanted to take a step back and understand the entirety of your argument.

In the video you were talking to your audience, people who have been following you for some time so there was no need for a detailed argument. I understand that you were essentially summarizing viewpoints you've already expanded upon elsewhere, likely many times.  But I thought to myself there feels like a more nuanced layer of thought to be found here. I tried to look through your blog posts and I found again that you are touching on the subject with the understanding that your audience is familiar with the core content of your argument. Despite some interesting reads I grew tired after about a year of posts. Your video library is quite substantial and I don't believe any of your books specifically target this position. So if you don't mind me asking in a very entitled way, could you point me to where you discuss in detail your vibrancy position.

If possible I'd especially like to to see how you conclude

1) The biblical language of a nation/tribe is specific to race, (From my understanding you in ancient worlds you belonged to any tribe your father was from) and how you come to apply that perspective to the modern state of living.

2) That race or genetics will always overcome culture.

3) Judging someone by the content of their character is a lie. What bothered me about this argument is how I am supposed to intellectually accept your argument under the condition that I don't judge you by you, but by your race, which I should theoretically believe I can't harmonize with in the same country.

4) You can intellectually avoid an angle of pure racial superiority under that position

Finally I do not know if you have a solution to the vibrancy problem but if you do I'd like to see it. I find that even if I were to be convinced of your position and (honestly I suppose I'd have to take it in a Malcom X separatism type of way) I have no inclination to leave the United States and there is no logical reason to believe Africans would welcome a mass of African Americans as a native son as any persons of slavic descent would be welcomed in Eastern Europe after generations of separation from the "motherland".

I don't know that I've ever addressed the matter in comprehensive detail, given that it is of little interest to me due to its complete obviousness, but I can certainly answer the specific questions:
1.   The Biblical language incorporates race because it is specific to nations and tribes, and both nations and tribes are subsets of race. Logic dictates, by the transitive law, that any language that applies to the distinctions of tribes or nations must also apply to the broader sets of races. Furthermore, in a sense of the word that is much older than the "racist" context, race literally means nation. Examples: the German race, the Japanese race, the American race.
2.   Genetics will always overcome culture over time because genetics cannot be educated or easily altered and remain virtually identical from generation to generation. This is why the so-called "destruction of the Black family" so beloved of conservatives is actually an observable disproof of the false conservative perspective on race since the cause of this "destruction" is not the Great Society or the welfare state, it is simply a people returning to their preferred cultural model now that they are no longer being forced, by the constant threat of racial violence, to live according to the oppressive culture norms of their enslavers. Africa wins again.
3.   You can't judge me at all. You don't have the right or the necessary information. And vice-versa: I can't judge you. But what we both can and will inevitably do is make decisions based on the probabilities that are derived from personal experience and relevant statistical knowledge we possess. That's all that anyone can ever do. Don't confuse rhetoric for reality.
4.   First, there is no objective "pure racial superiority" in the general sense. Second, there is average racial superiority in every single honest comparison of two or more races. There is no contradiction there, it simply means that the average superiority of one race versus another completely depends upon the metric selected, be it subjective or objective. What likely triggers you is the fact that the metrics you appear to have chosen tend to indicate your perception of the inferiority of your own race. But why permit yourself to be triggered in this way? I am not bothered by the fact that the average IQ of the American Indian is estimated to be around 87 because I am not average. Neither it appears, are you.

There is only one solution to what you describe as the vibrancy problem, and it is the Biblical one as well as the one that has been forced upon many of my people: to each nation and tribe their own land, their own laws, and their own culture. Anything else means war, sooner or later, as each group seeks to impose their own cultural preferences on the other. Remove Proximity from the war equation and there will be peace between the various races, nations, and tribes.

But since we live in a fallen world there will always be those who seek to impose themselves and their ways on others, which means there will always be war. And because we live in a time when Proximity is virtually ubiquitous, we live in a time of war.