When you have nothing to ground morality in, nothing metaphysical, like a personal God or even an eternal Platonic Form, the only thing that counts as moral or immoral is the use of language and how it affects the emotions. Language is the sole locus of moral value and moral action for the Left, that is why we have "hate speech" and "cancel culture." To quote Shakespeare, it's nothing but "words, words, words."
I'm Asian American. I grew up in California in the 1980-1990s. Back when I can faintly recall a Republican government. Anyway even back then, people used racial slurs toward me (and I toward them). It didn't damage me in any way I'm aware of. And every once in a while we became friends - and still kept up the racial slurs or at least stereotypes if not slurs. I don't mean to suggest it's morally licit to use racial slurs, but I suspect the fact that such language was possible and indeed commonly deployed reflected something more fundamental - perhaps a kind of healthy frankness or candor that was present then but is absent now. Wasn't it Tocqueville who argued for such social mores leading to more social cohesion? Yet today our elites dictate to us what's socially acceptable and what's not, not unlike the French aristocracy that Tocqueville lambasted. Or so I suppose.
Interestingly I have Asian American friends that I grew up with back then. At the time they claimed to have been unaffected by the racial slurs and so on. Yet today some of them suggest they experienced tremendous racism l, that they were psychologically damaged as a result, etc. In short, though we all grew up together and had very similar experiences with racial slurs and the like, they now might as well be poster children for the left. I don't get it. It's as if they've bought into the progressive narrative regarding the "trauma" of racism and rewritten their own past to fit this narrative.
Memory is tricky, with a propensity to make things up, especially under something like hypnotic suggestion, which our cultural overlords seem to have mastered. So if these were people you grew up with, I'd trust more your own recollections of how they responded to ethnic slurs than their current (re)assessments. Thanks for the comments!
Mr. Demski, you are in good company with this article of yours. My favourite is in Surprised By Joy where CS Lewis called it "Chronological snobbery” But a close second is “The Escalator Myth” noticed by me in a book called How Now Shall We Live co-authored by Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey. The myth assumes that humanity is continually getting better in whatever ways we need us to. (contrary to all evidence it seems) Pearcey went on to write some amazing books, many times channelling Francis Schaeffer in explaining the errors of the present ascendant philosophy of post-modernist progressivism.
Growing up there were four of us, Victor who is Hispanic, Marcus who was black, Anthony who is Italian, and me the redneck of the group. And we were and are like brothers. And you should hear the racial and ethnic slurs all around in good fun and humor. The best comedians know this kind of humor. Comedy keeps what you’re describing alive because the best comics aren’t scared of the cry bullies.
Thanks Tim. Sometimes these insults could be worn as a badge of honor, as symbolizing group identity. I'm not saying that was inherently good. But there's something healthy about giving and taking these jabs, and not letting them get to you -- a kind of psychic immune response. Way better in my view than the oversensitivity we see now with microaggressions and safe spaces.
A bit of a sense of humor helps. In The Mummy with Brendon Frasier (an American), he with was his future wife. Something was done by some other Americans and Edie said, "Bloody Americans". Then she looked at Brendan and said, "No offense". He said , "None taken".
I think there are at least two different motives driving this extreme racial and cultural hyper-sensitivity. One is a legitimate realization that racial stereotypes are often if not always inappropriate. The other is based on a strategy of leftist progressives to project the past sins of earlier leftist progressives onto their political and ideological adversaries.
Historically, the Democrats were the party of slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow segregation laws. Around the time of civil rights era of the 1960s, however, a strange thing happened.
Leftist Democtats claim that the parties "switched," and the Democrat racists became Republican. But what really happened is that the Democrats realized that hard-core racism was no longer politically viable, so they devised an alternative strategy of getting blacks as dependent on government as possible for their votes and keeping them trapped in dysfunctional cities and schools. It was perfectly captured by LBJ's off-hand comment that "I'll have those ni**ers voting Democrat for 200 years".
Democrats deflect and distract from this devious strategy by constantly accusing Republicans of racism based on racial hyper-sensitivity. In many cases, it is based on their amazing ability to read Republcan minds and detect their thought crimes based on the flimsiest of grounds! In reality, they are just projecting their own thoughts onto others, either consciously or unconsciously.
This video seems relevant to this post:
https://youtu.be/SzJxXxTPGkY?si=WcOuxY5k1CnCg0pL
When you have nothing to ground morality in, nothing metaphysical, like a personal God or even an eternal Platonic Form, the only thing that counts as moral or immoral is the use of language and how it affects the emotions. Language is the sole locus of moral value and moral action for the Left, that is why we have "hate speech" and "cancel culture." To quote Shakespeare, it's nothing but "words, words, words."
I'm Asian American. I grew up in California in the 1980-1990s. Back when I can faintly recall a Republican government. Anyway even back then, people used racial slurs toward me (and I toward them). It didn't damage me in any way I'm aware of. And every once in a while we became friends - and still kept up the racial slurs or at least stereotypes if not slurs. I don't mean to suggest it's morally licit to use racial slurs, but I suspect the fact that such language was possible and indeed commonly deployed reflected something more fundamental - perhaps a kind of healthy frankness or candor that was present then but is absent now. Wasn't it Tocqueville who argued for such social mores leading to more social cohesion? Yet today our elites dictate to us what's socially acceptable and what's not, not unlike the French aristocracy that Tocqueville lambasted. Or so I suppose.
Interestingly I have Asian American friends that I grew up with back then. At the time they claimed to have been unaffected by the racial slurs and so on. Yet today some of them suggest they experienced tremendous racism l, that they were psychologically damaged as a result, etc. In short, though we all grew up together and had very similar experiences with racial slurs and the like, they now might as well be poster children for the left. I don't get it. It's as if they've bought into the progressive narrative regarding the "trauma" of racism and rewritten their own past to fit this narrative.
Memory is tricky, with a propensity to make things up, especially under something like hypnotic suggestion, which our cultural overlords seem to have mastered. So if these were people you grew up with, I'd trust more your own recollections of how they responded to ethnic slurs than their current (re)assessments. Thanks for the comments!
Mr. Demski, you are in good company with this article of yours. My favourite is in Surprised By Joy where CS Lewis called it "Chronological snobbery” But a close second is “The Escalator Myth” noticed by me in a book called How Now Shall We Live co-authored by Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey. The myth assumes that humanity is continually getting better in whatever ways we need us to. (contrary to all evidence it seems) Pearcey went on to write some amazing books, many times channelling Francis Schaeffer in explaining the errors of the present ascendant philosophy of post-modernist progressivism.
Growing up there were four of us, Victor who is Hispanic, Marcus who was black, Anthony who is Italian, and me the redneck of the group. And we were and are like brothers. And you should hear the racial and ethnic slurs all around in good fun and humor. The best comedians know this kind of humor. Comedy keeps what you’re describing alive because the best comics aren’t scared of the cry bullies.
My grandparents and their descendants were all Syrian. Many of my high school friends called me 'Camel'. It didn't bother me.
Thanks Tim. Sometimes these insults could be worn as a badge of honor, as symbolizing group identity. I'm not saying that was inherently good. But there's something healthy about giving and taking these jabs, and not letting them get to you -- a kind of psychic immune response. Way better in my view than the oversensitivity we see now with microaggressions and safe spaces.
A bit of a sense of humor helps. In The Mummy with Brendon Frasier (an American), he with was his future wife. Something was done by some other Americans and Edie said, "Bloody Americans". Then she looked at Brendan and said, "No offense". He said , "None taken".
I like that.
My wife immigrated to Canada from Germany in the early 60s. Her mom and dad found the TV show, Hogan’s Heroes to be hilarious.
Try finding a version of Song of the South to show your kids. Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah
I think there are at least two different motives driving this extreme racial and cultural hyper-sensitivity. One is a legitimate realization that racial stereotypes are often if not always inappropriate. The other is based on a strategy of leftist progressives to project the past sins of earlier leftist progressives onto their political and ideological adversaries.
Historically, the Democrats were the party of slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow segregation laws. Around the time of civil rights era of the 1960s, however, a strange thing happened.
Leftist Democtats claim that the parties "switched," and the Democrat racists became Republican. But what really happened is that the Democrats realized that hard-core racism was no longer politically viable, so they devised an alternative strategy of getting blacks as dependent on government as possible for their votes and keeping them trapped in dysfunctional cities and schools. It was perfectly captured by LBJ's off-hand comment that "I'll have those ni**ers voting Democrat for 200 years".
Democrats deflect and distract from this devious strategy by constantly accusing Republicans of racism based on racial hyper-sensitivity. In many cases, it is based on their amazing ability to read Republcan minds and detect their thought crimes based on the flimsiest of grounds! In reality, they are just projecting their own thoughts onto others, either consciously or unconsciously.